BY BLOOD
by Axcent
Summary: The American Mafia had to answer to a teenager with the same haircut all good Catholic schoolboys had worn in Prague in the 90s; sitting unconventionally on a zebra print couch, a relic of old world criminality displayed like a Playboy spread: Mello.
1. WATER, WORDS

In Mello, Mihael Keehl was given new life. Big fucking deal; he'd been christened, he was familiar with the concept of rebirth.

He tested this outlook on Matt one day in the library. He said, 'Self-consistency is fucking stupid. I've been baptised, we've all changed our names. Why not take the opportunity for self-improvement? I'll be whoever I choose and everyone has to deal with it.'

Matt said: 'You saying fuck now?'

'I've always said fuck.' Mello said.

'Not that I can remember. And I think that's an oversimplification.'

'What?'

'I just think it's an oversimplification of the theory, and you've been pretty consistently a bitch since I met you. Can I see your... can I see those Ethics questions?'

Matt was too perfect in apathy. He was tilting his homework so Mello would have to look at the spelling errors and feel compelled to correct them. 'You just don't get it.' Mello snapped. 'And it's e-n-i-g-m-a-t-i-c. Give it to me.' he snatched Matt's paper and started erasing.

'No, because, you give your name, like, all this importance... and then say you don't care.' He immitated Mello's growl, '"It's like baptism, but I don't give a fuck." That's transparent as shit. It isn't baptism because there's no water, and you clearly care because you haven't shut up about it for like the past 20 minutes.'

'I'm not saying I don't care, Matt, I'm saying... what I'm saying is... I've been christened, and baptised, and renamed. It's...'

'Old hat.'

'Depersonalising.'

'Depersonalising?'

'I'm saying I don't need to be consistent. I need to be whatever it takes to achieve my goal.'

'I just think it's a name. I was called Mail and now I'm Matt. I'm still, like, a dude with red hair and a big dick. What is there to have a crisis about?'

'Roger says not to tell people your old name.'

Matt shrugged. 'Roger says a lot of shit and it all goes in one ear and out the other.' Matt was stick-insect skinny and floppy like a damp biscuit. He had sprouted his thickest thicket of freckles yet when summer had set in that year, and his cheeks bloomed with sunburn in the shape of his goggles. He was draping his arms over the back of his chair, his sharp ankles crossed in Mello's lap.

'You're average.' Mello said.

'What, in general? or do I need to take my pants off?'

'Both.'

'Here?'

'Dare you.' Mello said, picking his textbook up and pointedly tracing the page with one finger, performatively focusing. 'Coward.'

'Aw. I guess I am. Sorry.'

'Schrodinger's penis. Simultaneously large and micro.'

'Well, definitely not micro, I mean, c'mon.'

'The more you talk about it, actually, the smaller it gets in my mind.'

'Well, stop picturing it! Poor thing. Damn.'

Mello shoved Matt's legs off his knees and stood. 'I'm going to dinner.' he said.

'See ya.'

Matt rarely braved the busyness of the dining hall; it overwhelmed him. He was sensitive about odd and specific things like rough wood and fruit pits. 'Come to my room after, I got stuff for you', he said to Mello's back, craning his neck around the antique back of the chair. 'I'll trade it for a pudding and you have to say I'm above average.'

'Two puddings and I'll believe it when I see it.'

'It's, like, pulling teeth to make you be nice to me.'

'I'm nice enough.' Mello said, and then disappeared around a bookshelf.

Matt was the only kid at Wammy's brash enough to put his sticky-out bits anywhere near Mello's bite. In a fairer world, his eccentric joviality, fearless physicality, and casual wit would make Matt a uniquely exceptional person. Unfortunately, in Wammy's, which was their world, there was no third option. You could be L, or nothing. So Matt was nothing and, in the eyes of the system, nobody.

Mello sat alone on the edge of the ruckus in the dining hall. Near was in his sight line, sitting silently in the centre of the room, pushing his food into the corners of his plate with attentive seriousness. Near was somehow gravitational, sucking in admirers. He never sat alone, or walked alone from class to class. It baffled Mello: Near was, in his opinion, not charismatic enough to deserve the attention.

For years, Mello had fought to paint Near's motives as malicious. When they were younger, Near had broken his arm falling down the back stairs tripping over a stray tennis ball, and gone to the hospital. This, Mello had felt, was a ploy for special treatment, was deliberate attention seeking. It had irritated Mello to no end, had driven him to tantrum. He had wanted so badly to break his own arm, to break a leg, to die. It would be sweet vindication, he thought, when everyone read epitaphs at Mello's funeral, when everyone was miserable over the loss of him. They would say that he'd had infinite potential. Dead, he would no longer be able to lose. Forever he would be the gifted boy who could have been L.

Mello was plagued by persistent fantasties of glorious, immortalising death.

Unfortunately, Near met Mello's every antagonism with nonchalance, insisted on praising him publicly, and never lived up to the role of bitter rival in a way that would have satisfied Mello's rabid need for his anger to be validated. And Mello never died. Every day, he woke up as unfulfilled as the day before.

When he was finished his solitary meal, he put his plate in the pile of dirty dishes and gathered dinner rolls, cupcakes, and apple slices in a napkin for Matt.

'Oh, damn.' Matt said when Mello shouldered open the door of Matt's dim room on the third floor, spotting the dessert. 'Can you take the frosting off those?'

Mello put his armful on Matt's dresser, shoving aside a pile of USBs to make space. He picked up a cupcake and started licking the frosting off.

'Cool, thanks. Here.' Matt ruffled around in his bedside drawer and came back with a pill bottle. He threw it underhand at Mello's chest. The label said Matthew Ruvie. 'They switched me to Vyvanse.'

'Why?'

'No clue. I said I was tired.'

'You wouldn't be tired if you slept.'

'Yeah. Anyway, if there's a difference or you hate it, I'll just tell them it's making me jittery or something.'

'It's probably fine.' Mello said, picking up the other cupcake. Matt had started giving Mello his drugs a year ago, when he'd decided he didn't like them anymore. Mello had wanted to try them over exam period, hoping for an edge. At first Matt had badgered Mello for complicated favours in return, or to do his homework, but as their friendship progressed and their trade agreement was extended, he'd started harassing Mello for those things at all hours of the day and most hours of the night, too.

'Mm,' Matt said, stepping up to grab a naked cupcake and pushing most of it into his mouth. 'Did you see Grant on your way here?'

'No. Why?'

'He's been lurking around the halls trying to make kids drink piss out of a water bottle.' He took the other cupcake out of Mello's hand while Mello was still trying to scrape the last of the frosting off with his teeth. 'I'm glad they went back to vanilla; that red velvet stuff was too... like, I didn't like it.'

'What was he doing that for?'

'He tried to tell me it was special iced tea he'd gotten in Hawaii. I was like, "dude, you've never been to Hawaii. We live in the same orphanage, I'd know if you'd been to Hawaii.'

Mello furrowed his brow. 'I don't remember being stupid like that when I was 8.'

'I hope you're not about to say "this is why Grant's number 13". I can't believe they make the little kids compete with us, anyway.'

'Near was 2nd when he was 8.'

'Well, who knows what they're testing. Maybe propensity to lie just isn't L's thing.'

'They're testing your classwork, Matt. Obviously.'

Matt grinned. He had cake on his lips. 'I do OK.' he drawled. 'Do you want to see an MI5 van?'

'Yeah.'

Matt went to the window and stood with his shoulder against the frame. A swisher blunt and lighter were sitting next to the ashtray on the sill, and he picked them up. 'It's the carpet cleaning one.'

'How do you know?' Mello asked skeptically.

Matt fiddled with the lock on the window and popped it open. It had become difficult to open them since they'd put the bars on the windows, since Alternate had committed suicide. That had been just before Matt arrived. 'It's broadcasting.' he said, like that explained it.

'Why's it here?'

Matt shrugged and inhaled. 'Maybe you're getting arrested.'

Mello's dad was in jail. 'Says the asshole smoking weed.'

'Who? Where?'

'You're gonna get caught.'

'Yeah.' Matt coughed and banged his chest. 'Whatever. You want to see the signal?'

Mello looked out at the van again. It was parked on the curb on the other side of the street, advertising for Claire's Cleaning. 'Sure.'

Matt went to sit on the bed, pulling a laptop and two cellphones into a circle around his crossed legs. Mello crawled up next to him. 'That's the tower...' Matt said, pointing at screens. 'So many computers in here, see?'

'Doesn't mean anything.'

'No, yeah, but this one isn't supposed to be here – look.'

'Looks the same.'

'Well, it isn't. It's new.'

'The neighbours bought their kid an iPhone.'

'No.' Matt huffed. 'What do you want to do, then?'

'I have to study Administrative Law.'

'You can stay here if you want.' Matt said. 'I'm not doing anything.'

'You should also study Administrative Law.'

'Nah. You go ahead.' Matt closed the lid of his laptop and started playing with the Network Map on his phone. He slouched against Mello's side while Mello opened a book and started to read, lapsing into relative silence.

Matt had been at Wammy's for two years. When he'd arrived, he'd spent a solid six days rheumy and snotty, drifting between classes with a glassy blank look on his face. Mello had tapped him on the shoulder one day and told him that if he ever wanted to talk to anyone about his parents, not to bother, because family was an off-limits topic. Matt had said, "am I here because I'm bad?". He'd told Mello later that his parents were assholes, so he hadn't been grieving, just freaking out. But Mello thought it was odd that now Matt couldn't care less about getting detention, getting scolded, having privileges taken away. No punishment stuck. He smoked in his room and talked back and showed up late to the first class of every day. Maybe he was at Wammy's because he was bad.

'Break time.' Matt decided after an hour and a half of restless shifting, Tetris with the sound on, and the end of the blunt. 'You've learnt enough.'

Mello pushed his notes onto the floor. 'Wha'd'ya want?'

Matt shrugged. He had ragdolled until he was horizontal, hyper-flexibly twisted into the sheets behind Mello with his elbows digging into Mello's back. Limply, he sat up and then flopped back down with his head on Mello's outstretched thighs. 'You ever think about what it'd be like if you'd never come here? Like if you'd stayed with your parents or if you'd gone to an aunt or, I don't know, got... placed somewhere else?'

'No.'

'Me neither.'

Mello had a brother who'd gone to foster. A little brother who'd taken a new name, so Mello could never find him. 'There isn't any point, Matt.' he said, touching the red tip of one of Matt's ears.

'Yeah, I know.'

'Back to AdLaw.'

'Or you could keep doing that.' Matt said, reaching up to tug on Mello's long sleeve so he couldn't pull his hand away. 'Didn't you finish that book on the beach trip?'

'No.' No, Mello had brought Anna Karenina on the beach trip, not classwork. He'd taken his shoes off so he could bury his toes in the cold sand, sat in the shade of an aster, propped the book open in front of him, and then spent most of the day watching Matt meander in and out of the ocean instead of reading. Matt had looked a little like a washed up pirate with his black and white stripes and his jeans rolled to his knees, lazily letting the tide buffet his pale shins.

'Procrastinator.' Matt yawned, turning so his nose pointed at the ceiling and his fluttering shut eyelashes pointed at Mello.

'Pot calling the kettle black.'

'I never got that one.' Matt said. 'Pots are grey, kettles are, like, well, the one in Dr. Invermere's room is red.'

'Crockware's changed since the development of the English language.'

'Maybe they should redevelop the English language, then.'

'I think they are.'

'Who?'

'The children, I don't know, Matt. You say, like, rad, ZOMG.'

'Oh, I fucking do not. No I don't.'

If Matt were to fall asleep here, and Mello, courteous of his comfort, were to study here all night with Matt's slack face in his crotch... 'Get up.' Mello said. 'I gotta get my binder outta my backpack.'

Matt re-settled up against the headboard, a comfortable distance away. 'What's the complementary subject today?'

'Oh – Applied Mathematical Modelling.'

'Just running through the alphabet.' Matt crooked a finger, and Mello handed him the binder. 'How come I never got this?'

'You did. Yesterday.'

'Neat. Actually, I'm thinking of doing this.'

'Then do it.'

Matt speed-read Mello's work. 'Industry.' he mumbled. 'How come we have to learn this, I wonder? Did L have a case involving electromagnets?'

'He wants us ready for anything.'

'Even alternative careers in engineering, yeah.'

Mello scowled. 'There are only two options.' he said; testing another one of his worldviews on the only person who ever really listened to him, 'L and nothing.'

'6 billion nothings and one L.' Matt mused. 'You know, I like you a lot better than I like L.'

'I like you, too.' Mello said, grumpily. 'But I'm not talking about that.'

'Yeah, you're being pessimistic and too literal and oversimplifying everything, again.' Matt said. 'Actually, no, you're, uh, self-deprecating. Like, that's not a cool general statement you've just made, it's just emo shit you think because you take this too seriously.'

Mello twisted his mouth and snatched the Maths binder back. 'You can go be an engineer, then, Matt.'

'Better than nothing.' Matt said.

"There are three options: L, engineer, and nothing." had no ring to it. Matt was brilliant at making Mello feel dumb without making him feel inferior. 'It still matters.' Mello said.

'If it matters to you, it matters. Just don't be all emo about it.'

Matt was trying to say that he didn't believe Mello would surpass Near, that Mello should prepare himself to be disappointed. From anyone else, it would infuriate him. From Matt, it was melancholy and fragile.

This connection they had, this bottomless truce, had rushed up on Mello like flood waters rising. A sensitive boy with a gentle smile, a threatening genius without patience for metaphor – Matt should have been a perfect target for Mello's jealous spite, and yet. 'I should go to bed.' Mello said, realising that he wasn't going to get anything else done while Matt stared prettily at him from under the poster cacophony taped above his headboard. 'So should you.'

'Yeah.' Matt said. He yawned, suggestible. 'I will.'

The hallway outside of Matt's room was dark – lights out was 2200, and it was well past midnight by the time Mello left. Mello crept on the balls of his feet down to his own door, opened and shut it with the barest squeak, and turned the lights on inside. His room was ascetic. What had his childhood bedroom been like? It had had a rug with roads printed on top and a bunk bed. His father had painted the walls. His brother had drawn on the bunk bed with crayons. Dragons. Dragons, flames, and little people. It had been busy and homey. He'd never felt at home in Wammy's.

But anyway a room was just a place to sleep, and temporary.

The days at Wammy's were strictly regimented, encouraging studious conduct. Breakfast was served at 0545 and cleared by 710. Every child's first class of Days 1 and 3 had, before Kira, been a summary of current events and world politics hosted by a Ms Rohrbach in her History classroom on the first floor, but was now a discussion class on Kira guided by Roger and aided by a Doctor Yu of Social Sciences. Days 2 and 4 had been self-study in the old days, and were now lectures and readings on Kira, this time with help from the Japanese tutor. Monotony and single-mindedness were dragging down the already mundane routine, according to Matt. For Mello, the changes in Wammy's were like apocalyptic warnings. Change was anxious.

The doors were always locked ten minutes after the bell, so every day the entire school was treated to an interruption when Matt tried the door handle and cursed outside before stomping away. Today, they were showing stats on a projector in first period. Matt would have liked it – he was into numbers.

'You missed out.' Mello told him in their next class. 'They were graphing crime rates.'

'Ooh, axes. You know me so well.' Matt slumped onto his elbows and looked up at Mello through a waterfall of damp hair. 'I sort of like this place when no one's in the hallways, though.'

Mello nodded curtly. He had put his notebook and pens in neat lines in front of him. Matt was always allowed a laptop; he had pushed it into a corner in favour of prodding at Mello's knuckles with his fingernails.

'The separability thesis...' the teacher started, writing it on the chalkboard, 'and Dworkin. Who can summarise the Third Theory?'

'The textbook probably could.' Matt groused.

Mello raised his hand and started to speak in a rush. 'Well, jurisprudence ...'

Matt opened his laptop and opened a couple tabs. He signed into MSN and sent Mello a string of glitter text (the only font he used when he messaged Mello, to annoy him) and a picture of a circuit board covered in milk.

'At least listen when I talk.' Mello grumbled under his breath while the teacher wrote "counterpoints:" n the board,under her succinct summary of Mello's rambling answer.

'Say something interesting.' Matt sniggered. 'Dorkin, more like.'

'Mature.'

'Top theorists - legal philosophers - such as...' the teacher went on, 'Lon L. Fuller -'

'Huh; didn't know you had to be a top to develop legal theory.' Matt said.

'Be patient,' Mello snapped, pursing his lips, 'she'll talk about the bottoms later.'

Matt snorted loudly enough to draw the attention of the class.

'Something you care to share?' The teacher asked, eyebrows raised. 'Matt? Mello?'

'Not in particular.' Mello said, crossing his arms and tilting his chair back.

'Just riveted by all these tops, uh, in their field.' Matt said.

'Good. I'd like to see your notes after class, Matt.'

'No, you would definitely not.' Matt mumbled, sending Mello another line of glitter text that, now that Mello was straining to read it, he saw was mostly swear words. A skill Mello had never wanted to learn but had been forced to anyway was deciphering the code of Matt's writing – he used a gif of a dancing woman to represent the letter 'i'. Half the time he sent Mello keyboard smashes on purpose.

'I don't want to see them, either.' Mello whispered to him. 'What the fuck does that even say?'

'Says "pay attention to the lesson, nerd".'

'Wha'd'ya have against Times New Roman, size 12?'

'Nothing, I guess. I'm just teaching you visual word recognition.' Matt pulled up a menu of character replacements. 'This is a good letter U.' he said of a sparkling green weed leaf, assigning it.

'It is emphatically not.'

Class let out to break. Most of the students were ushered outside for mandatory vitamin D exposure, something Matt often excused himself from by insisting that he needed the washroom ten minutes before the bell and then staying there through the lunch period, playing on his phone and smoking. This was one of those days – Mello rolled his eyes when Matt winked at him after winning a disruptive debate with the teacher over whether or not he should be allowed to leave, and slipped out, laptop under his arm and backpack slung over one shoulder, very obviously not coming back.

Matt was not opposed, necessarily, to playing some football on a quiet afternoon. He liked non-competitive barefoot walks in the grass, and punting a ball back and forth between a few kids under a sleepy sun. It could also be funny to watch Mello foul everyone and push people on his own team out of his way, intensely scowling, from a shady spot on the back steps. Mello was super funny when he played sports.

But, nah, he wanted to sit around a bit and be alone. It was hard to be alone in Wammy's. Someone always wanted something: there was always a game being had, a test to take, a lecture to attend, a kid running in the hall, a puzzle on the floor. It was a hectic, manic environment. Sometimes it was just too fucking much.

Matt locked the bathroom door behind him. They had communal washrooms in Wammy's, with shower stalls and benches like a locker room, so when he wanted privacy, he had to shut everyone else out and deal with the occasional knock and complaint, the odd talking to from Roger or Sammy Walt the janitor. He sat on one of the sinks, legs hanging down and feet swinging, and opened Age of Empires on his laptop.

He spent an unusually long time playing without ever hearing the bell go off – odd, since lunch should have ended and faded into Literature class (or whatever they were calling it this year – Study of Kira's Top Five Favourite Mystery Novels, or something equally as absurd, probably) by now. Their curriculum was constantly being revised and, apparently, improved, so it was possible there'd been a schedule change he'd missed. Matt didn't think the constant influx of fancy PhD tutors with fresh ideas made a lick of difference for the orphans, really: being at Wammy's meant doing a lot of paperwork and not having a lot of fun. Every once in a while they got practical assignments, and then Matt would excel for a day because he was really good at problem solving, and inspired by real challenge. Sometimes they got to build bombs, which was the best. But usually he felt sluggish and confounded in lessons, clumsy. Studying was brutal, almost impossible.

Whatever L valued, Matt thought, it was a little too specific and close minded. Not that it mattered; he would rather be Mello's theoretical Nobody than be a cop.

After a relaxed hour of rising suspicion, Matt packed up his things and jumped off the sink. It was quiet outside the door, and the halls were empty. It wasn't until he turned the corner towards the magnificent wide staircase that rippled down from the upper levels to pool at the front door – that pretentious behemoth every child was dwarfed by upon arrival at Wammy's – that he saw another person.

Linda was walking briskly from the other direction with a pinched expression, flip flops slapping the floor. Matt made his slow way onto the first step, head down, looking at a game of snake on his Nokia, only half paying her any attention.

'Matt. There you are.' she called, stopping beside him.

'Yeah.' Matt said, still stuck in his distracted daze. 'Totally.'

'You don't know.'

'Yeah, no. Probably not.' Matt leant against the banister, still not facing her.

'L is dead.' Linda said.

'Uh - shit.'

'Near is L.' Linda said. 'Near is L now.'

Matt lost his game of snake and looked up, frowning. 'Mello -'

Linda shook her head. 'I think he left.'

It was like being tazed, hearing that. Matt bolted away from her, started hyperventilating as he climbed the stairs, sprinted down the hallway on the upper level. He bumped into and then threw Mello's door open, making it bang against the wall, expecting horror or misery -

'Hey!' Mello said, looking up from folding a t-shirt. 'Don't fucking slam my door!'

Matt stared. 'Linda said you left.'

'I'm leaving.' Mello said. 'Fuck this fucking fucked up fucking...' he shoved the shirt in his bag.

'Why? Where are you going?'

Mello stormed across the room to open his dresser and pull out a pair of jeans, which he began to roll up. 'L didn't choose. He died. He didn't choose.'

'What?'

'Seriously, Matt, breathe and sit down or something.'

Matt sat next to Mello's half packed backpack, hands on his knees, slumping. 'That's not right.' he said. 'Why's Near got the part, then?' It was impossible that L hadn't done the one thing he'd owed them, fulfilled the entire ridiculous purpose of their presence there: found a fucking successor.

'I let him have it.'

'That doesn't sound like you.'

Mello was livid. He was grinding his teeth. 'It's what I did.'

'Why? I don't get it. I'm like, not following any of this. How'd L die?'

'Well, Kira killed him, obviously, Matt.'

'Why are you leaving? Stay.' Mello didn't own much. When he was packed, the room still looked the same. It sort of freaked Matt out to see how little impact the departure of Mello's material presence had made. 'Do you want some of my stuff or something?' Matt asked, wildly searching for helpful words and coming up with nothing.

Mello closed his eyes tight and didn't cry. Oh, he hadn't cried in maybe 7 years. When he opened them again, there was Matt looking desperate and lost. Mello felt like he was doing to Matt what Wammy's had done to Mello: rejecting him. 'It's for the best.' Mello said. 'I need to do things my own way.'

'What things?' Matt asked.

'There's no point being here anymore.'

'Sure. Yeah, it's not like you're gonna get to succeed Near in the next 3 years. Unless he like... steps out of the building and gets crushed immediately by, like, a meteor. But where the fuck else can you go? You might as well stay with me and be first for a while. Then we can be, like, engineers. Right?'

'Matt.' Mello said, picking up the backpack and putting it over his shoulders. 'I'm taking this as an opportunity to prove myself.'

'Why?'

'If you don't get it now, I doubt I can explain it to you.' Mello snapped. 'I'm going after Kira.'

'Yeah. So, like, with what army?'

'I'm sorry, Matt.'

'No, fuck you. Where are you going? I'll come.'

'Just trust me.' Mello implored him. 'I have a plan.'

'Vague.' Matt deflated there on Mello's bed, put his head in his hands. 'Really fucking vague bullshit, that. Really bullshit.'

'I agree.' Mello said.

'Like this is the worst day of my life and I'm an orphan.'

'Ok. Bye.' Mello said.

Matt didn't move. His fingers were white against his scalp and he was gasping, he was crying, spilling water on the floor.


	2. SANCTUARY, SUBMERSION

Mihael Keehl had Family.

In 1995, the Czech police found the fingerprints of a notorious mafioso, Hynek Keehl, at the scene of the gruesome double homicide of gang associated Bartolomej Krajnc and Ludvik Wiśniewski. He was given three life sentences, and the papers that year celebrated the capture of one of the Czech Republic's most wanted and most evasive criminals. Hynek left behind two young sons, the untended grave of a pretty wife, and several more bodies that could never be definitely traced back to him.

It was decided, thanks to intervention from a well connected organization, that Hynek's eldest child be educated and raised by experts in England. It didn't matter in particular what happened to the younger, Pepik Keehl, who was only 3, because he didn't even talk yet – no genius worth tapping.

This was how Mello came to Wammys's. Hynek was his father.

Now, after 8 years of orphanhood, Mello was walking out the front gates. Wammy's had been like a diversion; now he would return to the life he'd been saved from.

Mello used the credit card that was his inheritance to check into a hotel in Manchester as Michael Ruvie, where he used the computer in the small office across from the front desk to purchase a plane ticket online, to Prague.

One step at a time, he thought; everything would come together. Mello had confidence in his own ability to improvise.

And what an infinitely lucky thing it was, in a world where corruption and criminal puissance ruled, that Mello had the powerful resources of the Mafia built into his genealogy. Despite Wammy's best efforts to make Mello as much of an orphan as possible – teaching him to be fiercely individualistic, separating him from his living relatives – they did not succeed in making him entirely alone. Keehl was a name with a little push in the European underground, and there was a sprawling network of people willing to call a Keehl brother.

Wen he landed in Prague, his first phone call in his search for a useful connection was to the prison. It took two emails asking for information from Misha Kell, a 22 year old journalist Mello invented, before Mello was given a number at which he could reach Hynek Keehl.

'Hello?' His father said, when he answered. 'Is it possible… is this my Mihael?'

'It's me.' Mello said, awkward.

'It's a miracle.' his father said. 'You've remembered your father.'

Mello remembered him – wiry, busy, suspicious, Catholic. He remembered coming down the stairs from his room at night to find his father was laughing at the television or discussing with gang members, a glass in his palm. When he spotted Mello crouched in the shadows on the stairs, he would chuckle and say that Mello was... what were the words... "not one to miss out". Mello would lose sleep watching card games, overhearing some conversation, seeing his father exclaim "bah! Stupid!" at the news. His father had blue eyes, blond hair, straight teeth, and long hands. Mello was fascinated by him. And his father had been proud of Mello. Mello remembered that, the embarrassment of being special. His father would introduce him to people as though he expected Mello to ascend and become God, someday. "He's a bright boy", he would say gruffly to friends. He supported Mello's curiosity, encouraged his interest in the lifestyle that was his birthright. "Lemme explain" was his motto; "yer smart enough to understand."

'I'm in Prague.' Mello said. 'I need a certain sorta help.'

'D'ya got a pen?' His father asked.

'Yeah.' Mello was calling from a payphone two blocks down from the hotel where he'd been sleeping, tucked away on a busy street.

Hynek Keehl gave him the name of a man, Dmitri Javorsky, who was driving taxis nearby. 'He'll come getcha. You must be... almost 15 now.'

'Yeah.'

'Happy birthday, Mihael.' Hynek said imploringly, 'Trust God.'

They ran out of time. Mello stood dry-lipped, with the phone to his ear, for several numb, guilty minutes. If he'd wanted to, he could have been calling his father all this time. It had never even occurred to him. He'd been convinced by his handlers to guard his anonymity. It felt dangerous, now, to be using his identity. But it was worth it. Hearing his father's voice was like finding his place in a book after having forgotten to bookmark the page.

When Mello called the number his father had given him, Dmitri Javorsky answered on the first ring. 'What?' he barked. Behind his voice, honking and tire screech rose and fell like symphony.

'My name is Mihael Keehl.' Mello said. 'Hynek is my father. He says you'll come pick me up.'

Suddenly, Mello felt liked he'd been punched in the gut by his own immaturity. He fiddled the phone cord in one hand and looked out at the bustling street, feeling like a lost boy.

'Mihael...' Dmitri mused. 'Keehl. Ok. Where are you?'

'Wilsonova. By the museum.'

'Ok, Kheel. I'm on my way.'

Within fifteen minutes, a Mercedes was pulling up at the curb. Inside, a middle aged, mustachioed man in a blue coat. 'Keehl!' he called out the window.

Mello hurried over, pulling the lapels of his jacket up around his chin against the battering wind. He yanked open the passenger door and climbed in. 'My father told me to contact you.' he said.

'Good.' Dmitri said. 'I'm here to help.'

The car pulling away, with Mello trapped inside, was finality. This was the plan. He was making fast decisions, now, and he was about to find out what he'd signed up for.

'What're you doin' wanderin' around here?' Dmitri asked as they sped down the main street. 'I heard you disappeared. Pepik, too.'

Mello was startled by Dmitri's bluntness. 'I went to an orphanage.' he said. 'But I've run away.'

'Ok.' Dmitri said. He drove aggressively, angrily, but his shoulders were relaxed and his face was slack. 'What can I do for you?'

'I need people.' Mello said.

Dmitri's mouth fell open, and then he laughed so loudly it startled Mello. He banged the steering wheel with the palm of one hand. 'People!' he repeated. 'Keehl wants people!'

'I want in.' Mello said, mortified and furious at being made ridiculous. 'I want in the gang.'

'You are Family, Mihael Keehl, and Family means something.' Dmitri said, but didn't say what.

They drove through the city with the radio playing American pop music. 'Do you know Destiny's Child?' Dmitri asked Mello, 'do you know Britney Spears?'

Mello felt like he'd been submerged in a new world, drowned, found Atlantis. Sometimes Dmitri spoke too quickly for him, or said something he didn't understand, and it shamed him to have lost so much of his first language.

'I also speak English.' Dmitri told him while they hovered at a red light. He never did, though.

After several minutes of speeding, Dmitri parked the black Mercedes taxi in front of a pale pink house, which was flush with its neighbours and tilting slightly. 'Home.' he said. 'I will introduce you, then I have to go back to work.'

Mello hefted his backpack onto his shoulder and followed Dmitri inside. The house opened up like a paper fortune teller. On the floor, red carpets and gold thread overlapping in a kaleidoscope of patterns. Above, a chandelier full of real candles. The walls were covered in paintings and photographs.

'Here is my Evzen,' Dmitri said, pointing at a framed picture of a strict looking boy posing with his hands in his lap. 'He graduated high school this year. You'll meet him, he's coming for dinner.'

Mello was led through the busy hall into a kitchen overrun with knit dishcloths and little porcelain chickens. A woman was at the sink washing a mixing bowl. 'Why are you home?' she called over the sound of running water. 'Go back to work!'

'My darling.' Dmitri told Mello, pointing at the woman's back. 'She hates me.'

'I hate laziness.' Dmitri's Darling snapped. 'Who is this?'

'Mihael Keehl.' Dmitri said.

Dmitri's Darling sighed and opened her arms. 'Little Mihael.' she said. 'I thought I would never see you again.'

Mello felt his face flush white. He had never been so uncomfortable in his life.

'Come help wash,' she said, seeing that he was shy, 'and tell me about your life.'

Mello dropped his backpack on a chair. There were magazine clippings covering the counter, and books. He saw a newspaper story about a shooting in Velká Chuchle next to a recipe for fruit dumplings.

Dmitri waved goodbye, stepped forward to kiss his wife on the cheek, and chuckled when she hit him with a towel.

Mello, outsider, was eager to make himself useful, eager to be distracted from absurd thoughts of how joyful it would have been to be a version of Mihael without dead mother or imprisoned father, to be known by these quaint people and to be familiar with their brand of nosy friendliness. He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and started wiping the stove.

'You're a nice boy.' Darling said, ignorant of the untruth of her assumption. 'You and your brother were here once, when your father worked. You were very young.'

Mello nodded.

'We were so sad when we heard they separated your family. But it doesn't matter. You're here now. Are you staying?'

'If you'll have me.' Mello said. 'I have money.'

'Shut up.' Darling said. 'You will do chores.'

'Of course.'

Darling bossed him around. She told him about her son, who played football and ran track. 'Your father,' she said, 'was so in love with me in the old days. He was so in love with every woman in the world.'

Mello was allowed to taste test the dough for dessert. He whipped cream by hand. When Darling wanted him to get out of her way, she grabbed him by the shoulders and moved him. 'I think I'll keep you.' She said, when the meal was finished and the table set. 'Very useful.'

Dmitri was home at 2100, and behind him trailed the terse boy from the photograph. 'So many police today.' Dmitri complained, pulling out a chair at the table. 'I wasted so much time moving the car.' Liquor and a pitcher of water took the place of a centrepiece, and Dmitri reached for the former. 'They kick taxis out of some of the areas.' he said to Mello. 'They kick us out of the busiest, best places!'

'Potato.' Darling said, carrying a pot full of them over from the stovetop.

'What's up?' Evzen greeted Mello, when he took a seat. 'I'm Evzen.'

Mello met his eyes. They were dark, old. Evzen must have been 17 or 18, but he had the countenance of a savant. '... Mihael.' Mello said. 'I'm Mihael.'

'It's good to meet you. Welcome to the family.'

Darling gave him three potatoes. 'So skinny.' she said, shaking his arm vigorously. 'You need to work.'

While the table lapsed into rowdy conversation, talk of cars and tourists and people they all knew, Mello thought of Matt. With only an hour's difference between them, he would be in his room playing games or something. Would someone bring him cupcakes? Who would he ask? Darling would have a fit over Matt. It was impossible, but if Mello had let him tag along, she'd have had a fit over him. Tomorrow, Matt would hurry by the rankings posted outside the cafeteria on his way to be late to class and his name would be at the top. He would probably stay in first place for the rest of his time at Wammy's. When he was free of the school and the orphanage, graduated and adult, he would be erased from its records as Mello had been. He would be adrift, left to ask himself that most fundamental of philosophical questions: whether or not to commit suicide.

There was no L, only nothing and engineering. Ha. Was engineering enough to live for? Could a man live for nothing?

Mello accepted a shot glass of hazelnut liqueur and lifted his glass in a toast – to family.

'Now, who wants chocolate?' Darling asked. 'Evzen, get it.'

Evzen stood like a spider unfurling. He was dressed in dark, sharp clothes – leather jacket, pointed shoes.

They split a bar of milk chocolate while Dmitri told Mello stories about his father as a young man. 'Hynek and my brother Andreas stole cars.' Dmitri said, flippantly. 'They sold them to buy nice things for their girlfriends, your mother and a silly woman, I don't remember her. Andreas... Kira got him in April.'

Darling put her hand over her heart. Evzen, who was texting with his phone face up on the table, looked up with a frown at his father.

'Kira?' Mello asked, surprised.

'It was terrible.' Dmitri said. 'Andreas was a good man. So many good men had heart attacks this year. So you understand, Mihael, that there are no people left for you.'

Evzen snorted. Darling scoffed. 'He's a child, he doesn't need this talk. Show Mihael your room.' she snapped, smacking Evzen's hand.

Mello and Evzen drifted out of the dining room and up the stairs. Evzen walked with his shoulders flung back and his flinty eyes flicking everywhere like search lights, like he was weighed down by a constant paranoia. He smelt overpoweringly like cologne and cigarettes.

'Are you,' Mello started to ask, feeling dwarfed, 'in the Mafia?'

Evzen opened one of three doors on the second floor. 'Did you really come here just thinkin' we'd hook you up?'

'... Yeah.'

Evzen lit a cigarette. 'I don't live here, so you can do whatever you want with the room. Put your things in the closet.' he told Mello, opening the door and showing him the empty inside. There were scratches all over the wood in the belly of the closet, like a cat had gone insane inside. 'I'm goin' out. Come with me, we'll see what you're like. You need a warmer coat, it's cold at night.'

'It's that easy?' Mello asked. 'You'll take me?'

'You're family.' Evzen said. 'For family, everything's easy. We need recruits, anyway.'

'Your dad laughed at me.'

'Because you talk funny and you don't know anything. You'd laugh at yourself, too.'

'...What about Kira?' Mello asked, offended and scowling.

Evzen shrugged. 'Kira's why we need recruits.'

Evzen dug through a bin that was tucked away under his bed for clothes. He threw a long black coat to the floor at Mello's feet. Most of the time, he kept the LED light off his phone pointed at his face, his thumbs frequently texting. 'And we'll need this.' he said, snaking on his belly to reach towards a back corner near the headboard. Mello heard tape rip as he pulled something away from the bed frame.

'I can use a gun.' Mello said, eyeing the glock Evzen was holding when he straightened up. 'Give it here.'

'Just so you know, little Keehl, if you talk like that to me any more I'll fuckin' pound you. If you have any manners, start usin' 'em. This is mine. You get that.' He pointed at a baseball bat leaning against the dresser.

Mello's stomach swooped. His eye twitched.

'Time to go.' Evzen said, ignoring Mello's simmering silence.

They went back out through the main house, where Dmitri and Darling were sitting at the fire.

'Where's he going?' Darling barked at Evzen, grabbing him around the arms when he swept down to kiss her goodbye and shaking him roughly, looking straight Mello, who tried to hide the bat behind his thigh.

'Leave boys to be boys.' Dmitri said. He was reading a newspaper with little square glasses on, and looked up only to gesture that Mello and Evzen should kiss him goodbye.

'Warm coats! Idiots!' Darling called when they turned to go.

Evzen turned on his heel and patted the jacket on his arm to show it to her, and then they left.

They took the same car Dmitri used to drive tourists around Prague. A wooden cross hung from the rearview mirror and swung every time Evzen turned too sharply. Mello kept the baseball bat between his knees, holding it tightly. 'What are we doin'?' he asked at a red light outside a museum.

'I got robbed a couple days ago.' Evzen explained, 'We're gettin' my shit back.'

Mello nodded. He watched the streets, buildings, people go by out the window. Prague was different at night. Prague was different with a baseball bat in hand.

Evzen parked the car abruptly in front of a house tucked away from the lights of the popular areas of the city. Without a word of explanation or direction, he stomped out of the car and across the overgrown front lawn. Mello strode behind, heart in his throat. There was a television on inside, which he could see through the window.

Evzen banged on the door.

An older woman answered in a robe. 'It's one in the morning, what are you doing banging on my door?' she asked, and then saw the baseball bat Mello was cradling. Her teeth clenched.

Evzen pushed past her without a word, and she made small resistance, let him bump her shoulder on his way in. Mello did the same. It was powerful. Mello had spent all his life learning the letter of the law, the moral imperative of it. But, as Matt used to say... fuck it. He was above the law, when he was holding a weapon.

There was a boy about Evzen's age sitting at the kitchen table smoking.

'Fuckin' think you can take my shit?' Evzen spat at him – actually spat on the carpet. 'Eat my fuckin' Doritos?'

Mello did a double take, readjusted his grip on the bat.

'I didn't do shit to you.' The boy said. He was nonchalantly slurping the milk out of a bowl of cereal.

The woman came back and started arguing. 'Josip's been here all night.' she said. 'He ain't steal shit.'

'What's that, then?' Evzen asked, pointing at a toaster oven on the yellowed counter. 'That mine?' He scanned the cramped kitchen madly. 'Is that my fuckin' coffee grinder?'

'No.' Josip said.

'You're gonna give me 4000 korunas and I'm still gonna fuckin' beat you.' He spat again. 'Just for standing in my home without my permission.'

He looked at Mello, beckoned him forward.

'This kid's gonna hit you.' Evzen said.

'I only have 2000.' Josip said, not sounding particularly scared. 'Your Doritos are gone. Bitch.'

'Hit him.' Evzen ordered Mello, while the woman started shouting for them to get out. 'Hit him!'

Mello held the bat up like he was waiting for a pitch, like it was a game. He crossed the kitchen in his new black coat under the expectant eye of the Mafioso he'd just met who called him family and swung the bat into the strange boy's head, sending him and his cereal crashing to the floor. There was a liquid, metallic sound when aluminium collided with bony scalp.

'We'll come back every day 'til we get my money.' Evzen threatened in the background.

The woman was screeching.

On the ground, the boy: starting to rise, reaching for Mello's pant leg. Milk spread slowly across the kitchen tile. Mello hit him again, in the arm. 'Don't touch me.' he hissed. He was inflamed, hearing the voices around him through the thick barrier of his ears ringing. He hit the boy again, swinging the bat all the way up over his head and bringing it down with a clang on his shoulder, making him shout, making him sorry. Mello couldn't see his face, just saw red, hefted the bat again -

Evzen snatched him up by the scruff like a cat with her kitten. 'This kid's gonna fuckin' kill you for 4000 korunas, OK?' he said, sounding rough and shaken. 'This fuckin' kid wants to fuckin' kill ya for 4000 korunas, and he wasn't even robbed, ok? You don't fuckin' cross us, don't come in our territory again. This kid's fuckin' crazy and he's gonna kill you for a toaster.'

Josip looked afraid. He was staring at Mello, and then he was puking in the milk.

Evzen and Mello walked out side by side, after Evzen collected the appliances that had been stolen from him and searched the drawers for valuables, taking watches and chains and a rosary from around Josip's neck. Mello was not in his body. He was snapped. He didn't feel like he'd swung the bat enough to be satisfied, he didn't feel done, he didn't feel better.

'Ok, Keehl.' Evzen said in the car. 'I think you're gonna do fine.'

Mello watched the dark sky out the window. No stars, no light. Just blurring black city, sinful city. There was no God, here. There was no going back from the black hole he'd just discovered in himself, the chaotic uncontrollable directionless violence.

'Want a watch?' Evzen asked, when they parked in an empty lot to avoid a traffic stop and turned their lights off.

Mello dug his fingers through the spoils, which Evzen had put in the cup holder of the taxi. He pulled out the rosary, wet and bloody. Trust God, his father had said, when he sent Mello here. He put it around his neck and liked the sacrilege, the imagery.

Evzen put a watch on. 'Shit fuck.' he said. 'They saw us.'

Mello looked up from his new treasure and saw flashing red and blue lights down the road. 'What do we do?'

'Nothin', we're not doing shit wrong.'

Mello's mouth was dry. He watched, frozen like a deer in headlights, as three cruisers pulled into the lot and several officers stepped out their vehicles, flashlights on.

'Why'd you avoid the stop?' One of the cops asked when Evzen got out to say hello.

'We didn't, we're lost. You know where Sterboholy is?'

'We're going to search the car.' The cops said.

Mello got out, too, and went around to stand next to Evzen. Evzen offered him a smoke to share while they waited, watching officers run their hands over the seats and under them.

'What's this?' A cop asked, pulling out the bat.

'For sports.' Evzen said, grinning.

'Where's the ball?'

'We left it at a friend's house, didn't we, Mihael?'

'Yeah.' Mello said.

'You can't have this without reasonable precedence.' The officer said. 'Ok? It's a weapon.'

'Did you just make that up?' Evzen asked, crossing his arms. 'How're we gonna play baseball, now?'

'I guess you aren't.' The cop said.

Mello could tell they were reluctant to let them go, but they did. Evzen had the gun hidden under his shirt, and when they skated away from the traffic stop and into downtown, he invited Mello to check his pack of cigarettes - only two of the remaining darts were tobacco; the rest were packed with cocaine.

'Pigs are stupid.' Evzen said. He didn't seem rattled. His face was blank. He had dark eyebrows that hung over his eyes, making him look brooding all the time. 'Take a bump if you want.'

'Do you have connections in the States?' Mello asked, holding one of the coke filled papers, not sure how to snort it and not wanting to make a fool of himself asking. 'Do you want one?'

Evzen snatched it while they idled at a stop sign and sniffed it. 'Yeah, why?'

'I need to go there.'

'You're a total little shit, aren't you, Keehl?' Evzen said in a low monotone. 'You got somethin' you're tryin' to do.'

'Yeah. I gotta kill someone.'

'Keehl, I'm not gonna laugh at you anymore, ok?'

'Good.'

'If you can get there yourself, I got a friend there who'll meet ya if I tell him to. Dad's got some guys there.'

'Thank you.' Mello said.

'Ok, crazy.'

Evzen parked the car in the Javorsky driveway and grasped Mello's hand in the light from the stereo. His skin was calloused and warm. For a weird moment, Mello thought about kissing him on his wet red mouth. 'Bye.' he said instead, pulling away and scrambling out of the car.

'See ya tomorrow.' Evzen said evenly. He got out of the car, too, and walked around the side of the house where he'd parked a Suzuki bike. He straddled it and squealed away down the street, leaving Mello to tip-toe back into the house, up the stairs, and into his bed.

It was quiet and cool in Evzen's room. Shadows from headlights in the street whisked across the ceiling like a baby's mobile. It smelt like Matt's room had, in Wammy's. Between the crisp sheets, surrounded by cigarette fog and bittersweet memory of Matt rubbing sleep from his eyes on Saturday mornings, aroused by fury and confused self-hatred after his black-out atrocity, soaring on the approval of a musky bad boy with a leather jacket, Mello took himself in hand and jerked off thinking about fear and freckles.


	3. DAMNATION, DESECRATION

Darling hammered on the door in the morning, while Mello was dozing on the end of an unpleasant dream. 'Breakfast!' she called, 'Breakfast is on the table!'

'I'm coming.' Mello answered drowsily. He rolled out of bed to search his backpack for a clean shirt and came up empty; he'd been living in hotels for over a month, washing his things in bathtubs with tiny bottles of complimentary shampoo, and he'd gotten lazy about it.

But Evzen, Mello reasoned, must have only recently moved out, because when he rifled through the antique dresser on the other side of the room, Mello found bundles of worn clothes, as well as three palm-sized switchblades tucked into socks. He pulled out a black wife-beater and stuffed it over his bedhead, and then pocketed the knives. Mello was sure Evzen wouldn't notice if they went missing.

When he emerged at the bottom of the stairs, he could see only Darling sitting at the laden dining table. She was slicing chunks off a baguette fresh from the oven.

'Dmitri eats early and goes to work.' she told Mello when she looked up and saw him lingering uncertainly in the doorway. 'Sit.'

'Thanks.' Mello said, scraping back a chair. He smeared jam and soft cheese on a piece of bread, took a boiled egg out of a pot sitting on one of the farm-style cloths that he'd seen hanging off the oven door the day before. 'When's Evzen coming by?'

'Pff.' Darling smacked the table with both hands. 'Who knows.'

Mello helped her with the dishes after breakfasting, and swept the kitchen floor. Darling hummed while she cleaned, an exuberant song which she punctuated by slamming drawers. There wasn't a moment of silence, so Mello never felt pressured to say anything, even when she asked him questions. Left more than a second without an answer, Darling would say 'it doesn't matter.' and launch into her next task.

When the plates were put away and the pots were hung from the rack on the ceiling, Mello accepted a fluffy green towel from Darling and the offer of a shower. He searched under the bathroom sink for a blow dryer and found abundant appliances: hairspray, keratin, and anti-aging cream. He straightened his hair properly for the first time in over a week.

He was invigorated, looking at himself in the bathroom mirror. There was a hard edge in his reflection. The rosary, the tank top, the status. It inspired him.

'Do you have a computer I can use?' Mello asked Darling when he was finished washing up. She had gone out to sit on the front stoop, smoking with the door open, watching the street. He leant against the door frame with his arms crossed over his chest and saw neighbours along the street basking similarly, sitting in the new sun. The thin layer of snow over the lawns was sparkling, dogs behind chain link fences were panting in the bright morning light.

'No, no computer.' Darling said. 'Do you want to make a phone call, maybe?'

'A phone call's fine.'

'Ok.' Darling stood with a huff. 'I'll show you the phone.'

Mello wasn't sure it was a good idea to call into Wammy's, but he was feeling a bit invincible this morning. He dialed one of Matt's secret cell phones, which Matt had managed to operate, purely to prove that he could, under Roger's nose.

'Hi.' Mello said, when Matt answered.

'Mello!' Matt's voice came in tinny, a little raw. 'Where are you?'

'I'm not gonna say.'

'Oh, come on.' Matt complained. 'I'm going to get a secret channel thing set up online so you don't have an excuse to ignore me anymore.'

'Go for it.' Mello said.

'Are you... like, good?'

'Yeah.' Mello told him. 'Everything's goin' according to plan.'

'Cool.'

'What's it like back there?' Mello asked. It seemed impossible that Wammy's still existed, now that he was so far away, so emotionally removed from its expectations. It was someone else's life.

'Stupid boring.' Matt groused. 'Linda keeps trying to be my friend like she thinks I'm... like, going to... you know, she's just... she's so annoying.'

What was with phone calls and making Mello feel guilty? 'Is she bringing you pudding?'

Matt laughed. 'Don't worry about me.'

'Can you,' Mello started, feeling pathetic, fiddling with the rotary dial, 'tell me something normal? Tell me what you're doing today or something?'

'You wanna know what I'm wearing?' Matt teased. 'Uh. Linda asked me what my favourite painter was a minute ago and I said, like, Rorschach.'

'Rorschach is not a painter, Matt.'

'Well, I mean,' There was a smile in Matt's voice. He sounded bright. He was fine. 'He does a lot of ok paintings of my parents fighting.'

'I contacted my father.' Mello said in a voice like a bird escaping its cage.

'Oh. Really? I didn't know- Well, what, uh, what was that like?'

Like having the possibility of easy happiness, fleeting and feeble, slip out of his fingers all over again. Like finding sunglasses on top of his head when he'd been searching for them everywhere else. 'Fruitful.' Mello said.

'I miss you like crazy.' Matt told him earnestly, his tone an outstretched hand. 'Change your mind about bringing me.'

The front door slid open. It was a little crooked, scuffing up the floorboards when it dragged. Evzen stalked through it and stood next to the photograph of himself, two pairs of unfocused eyes watching Mello. 'If I do, I'll let you know.' Mello said. Every time Matt said something sweet, he felt his heart harden like a fight or flight instinct. He didn't want Evzen to witness their correspondence, fucked if he knew why. 'Gotta go.'

Evzen tilted his head towards the still open door. 'We're goin' to pick up a dog. Comin'?'

Mello nodded. He'd hung the receiver up on Matt begging please, Mello.

Two other boys and a girl in a bright pink tracksuit were waiting outside in the road, idling in a spotless pick-up truck. Mello climbed in the back while Evzen kicked one of the boys out of the front and jumped in shotgun. The Russian rap top 40s were playing loud enough over the radio to shake the gravel on the road.

'This is Mihael.' Evzen said, turning the music down. He pressed his feet up against the dash and jerked his seat back so he could recline. 'Keehl.'

'Ahhh.' The boy driving said. He was sharp and blond with a spiky beard and sunken red eyes. 'Zdravko, hello.'

'Aleksy.' The other boy introduced himself, looking down at Mello from across the row of seats.

The girl kissed Mello on both cheeks, since she was close enough. 'Taya. I'm Aleksy's girlfriend.'

Aleksy put his arm around her and pulled her head onto his chest, grinning with gold grills.

The music was turned back up – apparently, names were all that was necessary as far as getting to know each other went. They drove right out of Prague and down a dirt road banked by fields. It was a long trip, and Mello started to feel carsick inhaling the smoke off all their cigarettes. Zdravko sped 20 to 50 kilometres over the speed limit at all times.

They pulled eventually into a driveway with a flimsy metal gate tied with a loose chain. Aleksy jumped out to open it.

The house beyond was made of stone and old, lording over a lawn full of plastic children's toys. Mello could hear barking coming from inside.

Everyone got out and huddled on the porch. Mello stayed close to Evzen's side, watching him all the time for behavioural cues.

'Don't let the dogs out!' The man who answered the door instructed them, opening it part-way and ushering them inside with a flapping hand. He was holding a thick black rottweiler by the collar. 'You want some Passoã?'

'Sure.' Evzen said.

The front door opened on a large, very dirty kitchen. Baby gates closed off the rest of the house. The dining table was covered in empties.

'Where are the glasses?' Aleksy asked, starting to open cupboards.

The teenagers were like an invasive species, herding themselves into this home and starting to feed. Taya found a bag of pretzels on the counter and shook them out into a bowl. Zdravko rooted in the fridge and grabbed a beer, which he opened with a fork from the dish-rack.

'There's the bitch.' The man said. There were four hungry dogs at his feet, and he was pointing at one of the thinnest.

'Load it up.' Evzen ordered, tilting his head at Zdravko. He handed Mello a cup of Passoã. 'Guard dog.' he explained. 'She's real mean, apparently.'

The dog looked mean. She looked like she'd do anything for a bit of flesh.

They lingered a couple minutes to finish drinks and smoke at the table with the man who'd sold them the dog, talking. Evzen told the stranger that he was going to business school, starting next year. 'I'm takin' a year to make some money right now.' he said. 'School's a shitton of fuckin' money.'

'Keep your head down.' The man warned him.

Taya sat in Aleksy's lap and watched Mello from under thick, clumping mascara. 'Evzen doesn't know how.' she said. She had a high, cutting voice. 'Why aren't you in school, Mihael?'

'I ran away.' Mello said. 'It wasn't useful anymore.'

'Hm.' she said. 'Me too.'

The gang had a tense, complicated camaraderie. Evzen pushed the others around, but Zdravko seemed to make all their decisions. When they peeled away from the house, dog in the truck cab tied by a cotton lead, Zdravko announced that he was driving to his brother's place to pick up rock, next.

Mello felt like he was getting the backyard tour of Prague. 'How do you guys make money?' he asked while they spiraled the car back towards the city at a breakneck pace along dusty brown roads bumping with potholes.

'Fix up cars.' Zdravko said. 'Shitty cars people just leave around.'

'So car theft.' Mello clarified.

'Yeah.'

'Jesus, kid.' Aleksy laughed, mimicking Mello's scowl in mockery and then flashing his sparkling teeth like a braggart shark. 'How do you make money?'

'He almost fuckin' bashed Josip's head in.' Evzen told them, twisting in his seat. 'For 4000 korunas.'

'Oh, shit.' Aleksy said, sobering.

They parked on the curb of a nice looking city house on the outskirts of Prague's eastern side. It had a street-facing two car garage, and when they knocked three times at the front door, someone inside opened the garage door halfway and they all went under it, bent at the waist. Three men were sitting on upturned buckets inside. One was bouncing a little girl on his lap, smoking a cigarette. Another toddler was on the bare floor, sitting alone, roughly slapping a bedraggled barbie against the concrete.

'Yo!' Zdravko greeted, and the men stood. They all grasped each other's hands, patted each other's backs. 'This kid's Keehl.'

Mello was starting to get uncomfortable with so many people knowing his name. He stayed aloof, standing a little ways back while they caught up. Zdravko's brother went to get scales and product from inside the house. He weighed the rock with the little girl still in his lap, watching their business and clinging to his shirt. 'It's almost bedtime.' he announced when he had Zdravko's money in hand.

'We'll head out pretty soon.' Zdravko said. He was rolling a pipe in his fingers over the flame from his lighter.

'Come by again soon.' his brother told him. Suddenly, he doubled over, gasping.

'Say bye to my Barbie before you go.' The older child requested over the sound of laboured breathing, reaching out the doll she was holding to Taya.

Everyone ignored her, staring in dumb astonishment as Zdravko's brother slumped painfully to the floor, tugging desperately at the fabric of his shirt, and collapsed right there in front of them. The bucket he'd been sitting on rolled away from his thrashing feet, its handle clanging and bumping along like a wheel turning.

From beside him, Mello heard Zdravko start to make an aborted noise, like he was trying to throat sing. Mello snapped his gaze away from the fallen man to see Zdravko backing away from the body like a wind up toy, wildly in a zigzag, gaunt face tight with fear.

Evzen rushed forward and knelt to put two fingers on Zdravko's brother's neck. 'Make Zdravko shut the fuck up!' he yelled. 'Shut the fuck up, Zdravko! Who here's got a public record -'

Zdravko took a rattling breath and then started to holler, collapsing to his knees. Mello couldn't tell if he was grieving or literally dying, and neither could anyone else. Shifting eyes and nervous mumbles filled the garage, backed by the musical accompaniment of the children crying.

One of the other men who had been in the garage when they'd arrived suddenly gasped spittle, moaned, and fell to the hard grey floor. His head cracked, bounced. If he hadn't died of a heart attack, he would have from the blood lazily leaking out of his hairline.

Taya grabbed the kids by the hands and ran to the door, pounded on the button to open it. Her and Aleksy rolled underneath as soon as it started to lift, and the rest of the gang followed suit, escaping the stench and threat of men dying.

Mello scraped his hands and ripped one of the knees in his jeans crawling under the gap, afraid he would suffocate in the aridity of Kira's ugly work – because it was Kira, he was sure. He heard the child with the doll screaming for her dead daddy, screaming her goddamn head off. Her sister had gone quiet, sucking her thumb. Mello thought he would suffocate in the noise of it all, the sound of Zdravko punching his own stomach in pain, the sobbing, the vacuum-like wind in the cold night.

Evzen jumped into the driver's side of the truck and turned the engine over. Mello slipped into the passenger's side. Taya clambered into the back and held one girl on her lap; Aleksy bounced the other on his knee and shushed her over and over and over. Zdravko sat mostly on the floor, head in his knees. The third man, who Mello still didn't know, sat dead straight next to them, cramped against the door, and then took a flask out of his jacket pocket and downed its contents.

When that stranger convulsed suddenly and died while the car was whipping past a stop sign on an empty dust road, Aleksy reached over, opened the car door, and pushed his body out. Mello watched in the side mirror as the corpse rolled away to the curb, and then lay flat in the road, a bundle of clothes.

'We don't wanna be connected to shit.' Evzen started to say, hurriedly, when he glanced sidelong at Mello's open mouthed horror. 'We don't want our names anywhere, ok? He'll be buried right, ok? Someone'll find him, someone'll... Everything's ok, ok? Ok, Keehl?' His voice shook so badly, he was nearly incomprehensible. He sniffed wetly on every breath.

'I got my name printed.' Zdravko said flatly. 'I got an assault charge printed in that "Prosím, Kira" fucking magazine.'

'Kira doesn't read "Prosím, Kira".' Evzen said definitively. 'Kira doesn't fuckin' read "Prosím"!'

They were all coated in the smog of terror. Dread had seeped between them, into them. It saturated their lungs. Evzen smoked four cigarettes in the time it took to drive Aleksy and Taya to their home, where they parted with prayer and blubbering blessings and then disappeared with the cowering guard dog into their flat, and then smoked two more after they'd dropped the girls at a Hotel where a worried looking grandmother ran out to take them into her arms. His hands were shaking.

'What's "Prosím"?' Mello asked while they sped back to the Javorsky family home.

'Pro-Kira paper.' Zdravko answered him. He had lain horizontally on the back seats, feet on the ceiling. 'I'm going to die. Leave me on the side of the road, Evzen.'

'Fuck you.' Evzen snapped. 'Shut up. Kira doesn't read the local fuckin' papers. Kira is in Japan. He doesn't read them!'

Mello swallowed, but his mouth was bone dry. 'You got your name in there?' He asked Evzen.

'You shut up, too, Keehl. You shut the fuck up.'

'Everyone got their name in there who was at that shooting.' Zdravko said. 'It was in most of the papers, man.'

Mello didn't want to be in a speeding car with a driver who might have a heart attack at any moment. He bounced his leg nervously. Death was everywhere and coming for everyone.

For nearly a year, now, the Wammy's kids had been inundated with information about Kira. His motivations, his morality, his psychological profile, his location, his age, his victims' names and faces, the limits and rules of his power. Inside, intricate knowledge had been presented to them like it was a unique and special gift. What an interesting, challenging case! With cold detachment they had poured over data and reports. None of it had prepared Mello for a reality where Kira was judge and executioner, where children were orphaned thanks to his decisions, where delinquent boys cried for fear of him, where families broke.

Evzen threw the truck into park outside the cozy pink house. The porch light came on when they strode across the grass: Evzen in front with his deepest frown yet, Zdravko silent as a spectre, hugging himself around the middle like he might shake apart.

Evzen opened the door slowly, anticipatory. 'Máma! Táta!' he called out, standing with his heavy boots on the carpet.

'Evzen?' Darling called back. She appeared from the kitchen, holding a wooden spoon and wearing a green apron. 'Are you staying for dinner?' she asked Zdravko brusquely, snapping the spoon at him.

Evzen collapsed into his mother's chest, wrapping his long arms around her round shoulders. He was much taller than her, but when he folded into her embrace like a pill bug, he was small as a boy. She clutched him to her and rocked him, muttering 'what is it? What's wrong?'

'Is dad home?' Evzen asked, letting Darling pull away to stroke his dark hair smooth against the crown of his head.

'Not yet.' Darling said. 'No, he is working late.'

Evzen's face twitched and fell.

'You better call him.' Zdravko piped up. He was swaying on the balls of his feet, hands buried deep in the pockets of his jeans. 'You better check on him.'

Darling slapped her hand over her mouth. 'No, no, do not tell me -'

'Kira.' Mello rumbled from behind them all. He felt like a thundercloud, a harbinger.

As a unit, the family huddled around the telephone. Tears were streaming down Darling's face. She kept the receiver tilted out, so they could all listen. Mello could hear a pot boiling over in the kitchen. Ringing and heat filled the house. It was like being in Hell.

And then, Dmitri answered. 'What?'

Darling let out a single loud sob and fell against the wall in immense relief. 'You are coming home!' she cried. 'Thank the Lord!'

'I'm only a little late.' Dmitri said, confused. 'Ten minutes.'

Mello felt Evzen grabbing him around the shoulders, pulling him close. On Evzen's other side, Zdravko, high as shit and conflicted with loss and celebration, was slapping Evzen's back and nodding his head like a pecking crow. Even as they squinted smiles at each other, held each other, Mello felt heavy and empty. There was no real relief to be had. If they were criminals – known, named criminals - there was no escaping Kira's will. One day, the guillotine would fall on them all. It was only a matter of time.

Mihael Keehl had to get the fuck out of here.

Dmitri came home to his wife ordering pizza and the boys all sitting at the table drinking schnapps. The dinner Darling had been cooking was ruined, burnt and unsalvagable.

'It's worse for my nieces.' Zdravko said after Dmitri had sat and been told the story of Kira's broad-stroke in the garage, over a slice of pepperoni. 'I had my brother in my youth, to look up to. They have no one.'

'They have you.' Darling said, putting her hand on his. 'We have each other.'

Small consolation, Mello thought. A meth addict uncle with a death warrant.

The house was a cage of spirits, now. Mello slept in Evzen's bed again while Evzen laid on the floor wrapped in a knit. Zdravko sat on a chair in the corner, smoking and whispering. That gentle blue tint that had been comforting and nostalgic the night before was now sad and dense. The smell of smoke was overpowering, Evzen's cologne too pungent and close. Mello buried his cheek into the pillow so only one of his eyes looked out at the melancholy scene that had crashed into this hopeful place. Selfishly, he didn't want to know when the rest of the family died. He wanted to be far away when their time was up, and to never think of them again.

Mello was the first to slip asleep and the first up in the morning, the least affected by mourning or anticipation of mourning to come, as was the case for Evzen. He crept across the squeaking floorboards under a curatin of sunrise, stepping over Evzen's sleeping body and past Zdravko, who was curled in a ball at the feet of the chair where he'd spent most of the night awake and tormented.

Mello bathed with the light off. What was delightful luxury the morning before was now guilty indulgence; he wanted to use the keratin and he wanted to look at his beautiful self while he flat ironed his hair. He felt that he had achieved some milestone, having seen firsthand dying. Near had never watched Kira kill. Mello understood more about life and death than his rival ever would, more than likely.

Something like "oh, so now it's personal" would be a joke Matt would tell, in this fragile moment. No, more like... Mello would hint that his own motives had strengthened and become more complex, more organic, and Matt would say, "holy shit, Mello, really? Is it personal now? You don't even know these guys. You're, like, co-opting a narrative to make yourself feel better." Matt would ask him if he wanted a Girl Scouts Badge.

Good thing he hadn't brought Matt, for now. Doubt and self-reflection would slow him down, and the clock was running.

When Mello came out of the bathroom, coiffed and resolved, Darling was up and bustling around the kitchen. 'Let's cheer Zdravko up.' she barked at Mello. 'You mix dough.'

He nodded and stepped up to the counter, sunk his fingers into butter and flour.

'Here, cream.' Darling muttered to herself, speed walking past him with a bowl. 'Berries. Here.' She slammed a bowl of raspberries next to Mello. 'Put them in.'

'What is it?' Mello asked.

'Scones.'

When the baking was in the oven and the eggs were hard boiling, Mello was tasked with setting the table. Darling gave him a centrepiece made of pine and red ribbon and two white candles to light. 'It's almost Christmas.' she said. 'Dmitri doesn't like to decorate until last minute, but I like it.'

'It's nice.' Mello said. 'Do you mind if I use the phone?'

'Call Evzen and Zdravko down when you're finished.' Darling told him. She turned away to get jam out of the fridge.

'Matt.' Mello greeted when the line connected.

'Mello! I was going to call you, but I didn't know – well, I guess it's 9 where you are - '

'I'm surprised you're awake.' Mello said.

'Well, it's Monday. Happy birthday!'

'I forgot.' Mello said. Matt must have missed class, as usual. He would be sitting in the bathroom, then, playing on his GameBoy.

'Nah. You called me so I'd say it.'

'I just remembered a minute ago.' Mello grumbled. 'I wasn't keeping track of the days.'

'And then you called me to see if I remembered, yeah. Anyway, write this down: the user is "mattsthebest" and there's a key, and the key is "16112004". Its at this Polish file share website, it's called Dokumenty. So we'll never actually send anything anywhere, we can just share an account and it's totally private.'

'Oh – you're talking about your "channel".'

'Yeah, because if you're not answering my messages on MSN, the only valid excuse is, uh, death or - '

'There's no computer here.'

'So they invented libraries in like, 3000BC for that exact reason.'

Mello snorted. 'I have to go, Matt.'

'What are you doing?'

Mello shrugged, even though Matt couldn't see it. 'I'm figuring it out.'

'Ok. Sure. Sounds urgent. I meant right now.'

'So did I.'

Mello kept the phone to his ear for a minute, listening to the dial tone after Matt hung up. He heard Darling stomping around on the other side of the wall, making noise to raise the dead. She called for the boys herself, shouting their names. Dmitri came down the stairs first and patted Mello's back while he passed.

The family sat around the merrily dressed table, downtrodden. Dmitri flipped open the morning paper, which he had collected from the front stoop, and pinched the bridge of his nose, frowning deeply. The front page headline read "KIRA IS HERE".

Evzen's fit about Kira not reading Czech papers flashed in Mello's mind's eye. It didn't matter what Kira read, really. Nothing mattered except perfect anonymity, that much was clear.

'Oh... Mihael...' Dmitri breathed, pausing in his scan of the story. He smacked his lips, offered the paper to Mello with a pitying frown. 'Kira was in the prisons.'

Mello read the list of names printed – the casualties in a mass murder committed the night before of, primarily, convicted or wanted men between the ages of 30 and 55. And among them, Hydek Keehl, murderer of two. Father of two, too, but that was not printed.

What, Mello thought, is the fucking point of slaying the punished? Was there no atonement, forgiveness, mercy?

Evzen grasped Mello's shoulder, face impassive.

Across from him, Zdravko looked like a squeezed sponge. He read the paper, next, and prodded the ink of his brother's name harshly. 'He was acquitted.' he snarled.

Darling nodded. She heaped cream on Zdravko and Mello's plates, forced fruit and cups of coffee on them.

'I'll buy a plane ticket today.' Mello said. Too much more of this would drive him up the wall.

Dmitri sighed. 'We will pray for you.'

'Patya knows you'll be coming.' Evzen said, seemingly happy to have a change of subject. 'I told him you'd be there someday; he lives in Los Angeles. I'll give you his number.'

'And he must talk to Lorenzo. Lorenzo knew your father very well, better than we did.' Dmitri said.

'Thank you.' Mello reached up and fiddled with the beads on his rosary. It had become heavier, not that it had ever been particularly light. 'I'll pray for you, too.' he said. 'And your Family.'

He was getting better at goodbyes. He was getting a lot of practise.


	4. INHERITANCE, INQUISITION

Mello's trainers squeaked on the stairs as he descended into the gloom of a suburban basement in East Hollywood.

He had arrived in L.A. in a dazzling heatwave, his presence something of a spectacle for the limping, desperately understaffed Mafia. Here was this broomstick-looking kid with a snooty, nose-turned-up attitude, blathering on about his intention to take down the seemingly unbeatable supernatural force that had crippled and nearly destroyed them... the gang was needful of his fresh blood, but amused by the innocence of his lofty expectations and bloated sense of self worth. The longsuffering old guard looked forward to seeing Mello's optimism smashed against the rocks of the same black reality that had jaded them, cured their stupid youth.

Behind Mello on the basement stairs were Lorenzo, the under boss Dmitri had insisted would be good to the son of Hynek, an old friend of Enzo's who had dropped out of highschool in Prague and relocated to America the year before called Patya, and Rod Ross, who was the Don. They were carrying handguns with long silencers and wearing leather gloves. Mello wore latex, given to him by Lorenzo on the drive over.

Mello's understanding was that he was in this middle class house on the edges of L.A. to have the strength of his character tested, to have his loyalty cinched. Mello could guess what it would all involve. He'd read the Mafia's Wikipedia page.

Mello squinted in the low light of a swinging bare bulb when they stopped at the bottom of the creaking stairwell. In the bowels of the basement, he could make out two washing machines shoved in a corner, a drying rack with shirts hanging from its unfolded arms pushed against a water-stained wall, and a man shackled by the wrists from the ceiling. The man appeared unconscious. He was naked except for a sheet of caked blood.

'Alright, Mello.' Rob Ross said, slapping a 9mm into Mello's palm. 'Put him down.'

One human life, Mello thought, squeezing the trigger without hesitation, was a small price to pay to grind the change Kira was enacting in the world to a halt. A small price to pay to prove to these fucking assholes how badass and unflinching he, a graduate of the most grueling detective training programme in the fucking world, was.

They had trained on the range in Wammy's. Mello had been exceptional. He always kept his groupings tight. They'd simulated duress - added challenge - by doing the 100m dash before picking up their guns, but Mello's aim was always true. He would level his gun without a moment's pause, settle his puffing breath, and aim the sights with steady hands. Pop, pop, pop – right in the chest of the flesh-painted practise dummy. Heartbeat up, he could still keep his body calm. That was what Roger and Watari and L never fucking saw - Mello under pressure boiling like a frog in rising temperature, keeping his goddamn cool, staying in the water.

They had practised shutting down their empathy, too, in the classroom. Really, they had learnt everything they needed to become great servants of the human race or great enemies of it, and then their teachers had crossed their fingers: please don't use this skill against us. Please just be L.

And Mello would not be a failure of Wammy's, no matter what deeds, no matter what sins he committed in service of its goal. That muggy grey area – succeed L at all costs – would serve his conscious, now.

The man was tied like a bear for a trophy hunter, an easy target swinging slightly. He was not even real with his eyes closed, could have been dead already, could have been a mannequin sprayed with chocolate syrup and corn starch. When the bullet hit his chest, he grunted and woke up.

'Better shoot him again.' Patya said.

Mello shot him again. It was much harder to kill a person than he had realised. He'd read so many crime scene reports which summarised the process in 5 sentences or less, and so hadn't been prepared to watch someone cling to life and gurgle blood and beg uselessly. He had to shoot him a third time, and by then the act of squeezing finger on trigger was getting a little routine.

Rod Ross nodded in Mello's peripheral and brushed by to inspect the slumping corpse. There was a drain below them which sucked the blood away, leaving streaks along the uneven rocky floor.

An unfinished basement will bring down the value of the house, Mello thought insanely. He was looking not at the death, but at everything else. He was stirring himself into anger about anything else. Why hang clothes to dry in a sunless, dank basement? Invest in a fuckin' dryer.

Mello hadn't known that the Mafia operated torture rooms in regular looking, rather nice homes with mowed lawns. He had been expecting... something else. Something with less contrast, something less challenging to his sense of normalcy.

But it was undeniably good to be among people with power. Evzen, Zdravko... petty car thieves with cigarette smoke in their hair and dumb assault charges... those were the sort of small fry nobodies Mello couldn't afford to run with forever, if he was going to achieve the same level of political sway as Near would be given as L's successor.

Patya packed some ugly, brutal looking tools that were sitting on a piece of particle board by the stairs into a book bag. There were knives, there were prongs, there were brands and hooks and worse, more imaginative things. 'All done.' he smirked at Mello, heaving it over his shoulder.

They left the body in the basement. Lorenzo turned the lights off after hosing down the floor and everyone's shoes.

Mello had the unpleasant experience of riding in the back of Lorenzo's car with wet socks and cold feet for over an hour on the way back to Patya's apartment, where he was staying. He never made the mistake of wearing cloth trainers to work again.

Mello's first night in L.A. had been spent uncomfortably jet-lagged on Patya's couch. Patya had met him at the airport gate when he flew in from Prague with a sign that read "Evzen Friend". He had been accommodating, but not familiar in the way Dmitri and Darling were. Mello was very aware that he was a temporary guest taking up too much of the minimal space in Patya's cramped apartment.

The morning after his arrival, Lorenzo had swung by in his car, since Patya didn't have one, to bring Mello to base so they could discuss his gang membership over gin and tonics. A date was set for the induction ceremony, and then Mello was told to wait.

For several muggy days, he'd drifted through the city with a bus pass, familiarising himself with the public transit, the neighbourhoods, the special loneliness that accompanies all young runaways when the world is free for the tasting but not very appetising. He passed an uneventful and non-celebratory Christmas at a house party Patya dragged him to down the street, hiding behind his hair on a threadbare couch while music videos played over his head on a projector screen and boys smoked and drank around him.

It wasn't until the tail end of December that Mello was officially folded into the American Mafia, at a formal dinner party in the Hills. By that time he was desperate for it.

Lorenzo encouraged him to purchase a suit for the ceremony, so Mello went out with Patya to buy slacks and a white shirt. He wore them under a hand me down leather jacket that Evzen had grown out of and gifted to him before they'd parted in Prague. When he'd left the bathroom after changing and primping in the tiny round mirror over the sink in Patya's apartment, Patya had shrugged and allowed the small rebellion, but when Lorenzo came to pick them up in his white BMW, he told Mello he looked like a little prick in his worn leather getup. 'Though you probably can't help it.' he'd said.

It was at this event Mello first met Rod Ross, the Don. Mello followed his minders through the doors of the least spectacular beige mansion on the driest street in Hollywood to see Ross seated at the head of an enormous table in the dining room, dressed all in white and drinking tequila with lime. Ross had massive hands and slow, viscous eyes.

'We're all here because we've decided to make Mello part of the Family.' Ross had announced, when all the guests had found their places. 'Dmitri, Ipati, and Lorenzo... these guys want to call Mello brother. Do you intend to live a new life in the Family, Mello?'

'Yes.' Mello answered.

Lorenzo, who was sitting at Mello's left elbow, put a knife and a handgun in front of him, pushing the plate that had been set there roughly away.

'Do you acknowledge that you are swearing today to live and die for this Family?' Ross asked.

'Yeah.' Mello said. 'I get it.'

'Prick this finger.' Lorenzo told him, tapping his right hand and giving him a sewing needle.

Mello did as he was told. A spot of blood bloomed and coursed into the tiny valleys of his fingerprint.

'You were baptised to serve God by your parents. You are baptised now to serve the Family, by the Family.' Patya, who was on his right, told him in a whisper, patting his hand.

Mello was given a photo of St. Anthony, and instructed to wipe his blood across the saint's glossy face. It was cloying in the room; all the men watched him with religious fervour.

'If you betray us,' Rod Ross said, as Lorenzo took the photo and suddenly and violently crumpled it in his fist, 'You will burn as the Saint burns now.'

Lorenzo snatched Mello's wrist, placed the bloodied picture in his palm, and lit it with one of the candles from the table setting. The paper curled and smouldered. Little flames tickled Mello's fingers. He resisted the impulse to shake it off, let it kiss him hotly.

Mello nodded his agreement, raptured.

'Alright, let's fucking eat.' Rod Ross said.

Despite brutish appearance, Rod Ross was at least cunning enough to use a fake name, and to encourage his gang to do the same – whoever the men who were sitting at the table with him had been before Kira, was dead. They had all been reborn by the grace of the same oath Mello had now taken. Mello's desire that his real name be forgotten now that his relevant Mafia relation was known by the bosses was instantly respected. He was now able to move forward in the blood obsessed Mafia as a prodigal bastard.

Two days of rest after the ceremony allowed Mello to settle the disturbed dust of his new identity before Lorenzo pulled up in front of Patya's apartment block again. He always drove right by if Patya didn't come out quickly enough, and then they would have to walk down the street to the out of service gas station at the end of the block to jump in the car and speed off. Lorenzo was mean and paranoid, like a nervous little dog. He always drove a minute or two in the wrong direction before he would get on the highway, or he would park at a grocery store and sit there for a while before they could be on their way.

As they drove through L.A. traffic to his hazing, his first murder, Mello had rolled his eyes when Lorenzo pulled into a coffee shop parking lot and idled, pretending to read the folded paper map he kept in the glove box.

'We being followed?' Lorenzo had snapped, slapping the map against the steering wheel and swiveling around in his seat to stare flatly at Mello.

Mello glared back, corners of his mouth ticking. 'Sittin' in the back makes me fuckin' nauseous.' he finally said.

'You don't know. So shut the fuck up, little prick.' Lorenzo said evenly.

Mello hated Lorenzo. But Lorenzo was above him, for now; an old guard asshole with grey roots and scars on his jowls. Patya answered to him, and Mello lived on Patya's couch in Patya's shit apartment, so Mello answered to everyone - including the woman downstairs who complained when he paced around the kitchen early in the morning and woke up her cat, apparently. Until he'd established himself as someone to be treated with deference, he had to tread a little softly.

Then after the killing of the hanging man in the basement, Lorenzo asked if Mello was feeling nauseous, still, while they were parked at a gas station waiting for Lorenzo's anxiety to abate.

'No.' Mello said. He was sitting sideways across the backseat so he could lounge against one the doors. 'The car's not moving.'

Mello had the distinct impression that Lorenzo didn't like him right back, and not just because Lorenzo was the type to humble a new guy. Lorenzo watched him in the rear view with a suspicious, uneasy look. There had been an eye dropper's worth of that look in Evzen's eyes when they'd left Josif bleeding in the kitchen. Mello was starting to associate that look with having done something exceptional. It was fear.

'You did good.' Patya said over the classical music station when Lorenzo turned back around to start the car and they pulled away from the pump.

'He doesn't give a shit.' Lorenzo said. 'He's a psychopath.'

Mello sucked his teeth.

'Nah.' Patya said. 'He's a good kid.'

'Buy him a fucking ice cream.' Lorenzo mumbled. 'You want to know what that man did to deserve what he got, you crazy prick?'

'Sure.' Mello answered.

'See?' Lorenzo snapped, flicking Patya beside him with the back of his hand. 'He'd do it whether it was retribution or not. See? Cold blooded.'

'We told him to.' Patya said. 'He's our soldier.'

'Are you obedient?' Lorenzo asked, leveling his eyes in the mirror again.

'No.' Mello shrugged.

'He was an informant. A lot of people had heart attacks thanks to that man.' Lorenzo was starting to sound like a kettle steaming.

Some misunderstandings about his character could be useful. Mello could live with crazy, remorseless. 'You might remember that my intention is to put a bullet in Kira.'

Lorenzo scoffed.

'And anyone who gets in my way.' Mello continued, tasting the way that felt. Yeah, good. Dedicated, single-minded. All things he wanted to be, wanted to have associated with his name.

Every time he tweaked his presentation of himself, he thought about Matt and wondered what Matt would think of him. It had been weeks since he'd called Matt, and he had yet to connect to that Polish file sharing website. It was precarious to be making progress that he wasn't confident about sharing with Matt, for fear of judgment or horror. Maybe Matt wouldn't like Mello now, wouldn't approve of what he was working on becoming. And then what would they talk about? The weather in Hollywood? Mello felt like he'd walked into a funhouse and come out distorted, left his real self behind in the reflections.

'L couldn't even do it.' Patya said. 'I think this is just what the world has become.'

Mello hunched into his jacket. It smelt like smoke and sweat. So many people were quitters; defeatist losers. 'How do you get promoted around here?' he asked before getting out of the car in front of Patya's apartment block.

'You put your time in.' Lorenzo answered gruffly.

'And if you don't have time?' he asked Patya, after closing the door. Lorenzo didn't believe in him. No one believed in him until he showed them.

Patya shook his head. 'Lorenzo's got the only answer. Work until Rod Ross is impressed.'

Wrong. That was a different answer. That was something Mello, in all his creativity, could pull off. 'What does he like?'

'He likes things to get done...' Patya yawned. They took the clunky elevator up from the red carpeted lobby to the 5th floor.

Everyone fuckin' likes getting things done, Mello thought harshly. 'What does he want done?'

'Whatever he tells you to do.'

Mello sighed. There was a reason, then, why Patya and he were now of a rank despite Patya's seniority of at least 3 years. Patya was unobservant and obtuse. He had no ambition.

They ate a lunch of grilled cheese at Patya's little metal table. Patya had to sit in the armchair, which he dragged from the living room, while Mello sat in a folding chair that had L.A. SCHOOL DISTRICT stenciled on the back. The place was only furnished for one.

'You'll get paid on Friday.' Patya said, coating his food in ketchup. 'That'll make you happy.'

'Is there extra credit?' Mello asked.

'Huh? Like school?' Patya grinned at him, 'You want to be the Don's teacher's pet sorta thing?'

'I wanna get promoted.' Mello felt his face getting hot. 'I wanna know what gets a guy promoted in this trash heap. What does Ross consider exemplary?'

'Worry about yourself before you worry about what Rod Ross wants. I only have one chair, y'know. You can't live here forever. Wow, this stuff's spicy.' He was reading the ketchup label, trying to keep his insinuation that Mello was a pest he wanted to be rid of casual.

Mello scrunched the paper towel he was using as a napkin and dropped it in the centre of his plate. 'Sure.' he said. 'I've started looking for apartments.'

'This is an organisation, so... going off on your own doing whatever because you think it'll make the Don think you're cool is totally unnecessary. Don't get picked up for something we didn't tell you to do. Just chill, let the Family take care of you. You'll get by good, there's lots of work.'

When he was 7 years old Mello had been assigned to a room in Wammy's and been given a binder full of instructions. 'Should you have any questions', Roger had told him, with a hand on his shoulder, 'you only have to ask.'

In the print-out, outlined in detail, were the things which impressed L: supplementary work, independent investigation, outstanding curiosity – everything a child could do to make himself a better successor and a better student was encouraged. Quirky behaviour, too. It said in the print-out that L was willing to accommodate a healthy sweet tooth, or a reasonable hobby.

When Mello had asked questions constantly in those early days of Wammy's, he had always gotten an answer that made sense and a shot of encouragement.

For two months following his initiation into the Mafia, Mello was deeply and furiously frustrated by the lack of structure in his life. It was so jarring to be just a face in the crowd. He was given jobs that involved driving around, picking things up, putting things down again. He learnt the false names of a dozen other soldiers but made no friends. The apartment he started renting stayed stark save the bare necessities and a white shag rug which quickly turned grey under the boots he stomped on it in. At every opportunity, he needled information out of the idiots around him, searching for ways to stand out and show them all up. It was difficult to be inspired by kids with no passion outside drink, drug, and party.

The death throes of his old identity and the squalling of his new were strangled and silenced by the anxiety of standing still. In this cacophonous bad mood, Mello was no longer too guilty to check on Matt. He had pushed a lot of his self deprecating feelings down to make room for his mounting impatience, his burgeoning existential fury.

He sat down on a cool night off and logged into Matt's Polish file sharing website. There was one file there, unnamed. He downloaded it, thinking that the whole thing really was silly, over the top precaution: just the sort of thing Matt would take pride in.

Mello could have called him, really. How had Matt so perfectly predicted the shameful difficulty Mello would come to have in such a simple thing as letting Matt hear the crack of his depressive, deepening voice?

In the file: _What up Mello?_ And nothing else.

Mello deleted Matt's message and wrote _Not much. - M_, re-uploaded the file, and stared a while at the white light off the laptop screen.

Not much.

Well, yeah, it was easier to lie over text. Maybe Matt had known Mello would need to. But that was giving him too much credit; Matt wasn't telepathic. Fuck, Matt couldn't even tell if someone was pissed at him or saying a neutral hello half the time. Matt didn't know shit. It was ridiculous to be scared of his insight.

Mello tapped his fingertips lightly on the keys. His leg was bouncing a little. Did Matt have notifications set up? Would he know Mello had replied? Would he answer or would he be in class? Had he already decided to forget about the negligent asshole friend who had left him to pursue pipe dreams in the criminal underground?

Updated 01:31, it had said when Mello posted. He refreshed the page for what he decided would be the last time before he would go to bed and saw that the time had changed – 01:48. His throat clenched.

_Wow FINALLY! Hey if not much is up wtf was stopping u from sending me 1 (one) fucking message? plz respond_

Mello snickered._This is a stupid way to talk. - M_

_Stupider not to talk. Can i get an exposetory essay on wtf bc like are you gagged or under duress? Has your once great vocab been reduced to a word and a half?_

_I've been busy. - M_

_Holy shit really wow thats so interesting! Anyway i think i have some japanese homework to do so im gonna go bc if i wanted to get stonewalled id go bash my head against the brick outside_

And with that, Mello was already in a corner. Small talk, polite conversation, subtlety: all concepts lost on Matt. Evading him was like trying to duck around the the Pacific Ocean – it just became the Atlantic and then the Indian as you skirted around. _Do you want help with it?_, he wrote and then deleted. What was the point of pretending they'd held onto their old relationship when Mello wasn't there in that sunlight library, elbow touching Matt's elbow, sucking up the fumes off Matt's smelly markers? He had mostly left behind a lot of shit that he would never miss when he left Wammy's, but then there was this mirage of simple joys abandoned there in England, too, ripe and rose-tinted, all these impressions of Matt and Matt's dimples and Matt's knobby knees. _I'm in the States. I found sympathisers. I got my own place. - M. _he sent, instead. It was one-sided that he could so perfectly imagine Matt's rounded back leaning close to his laptop, Matt penned in by books and overwhelmed by papers on their usual table, when Matt didn't know what sort of shape Mello was making in the world at all.

_You just get further away huh_

_Near's people are based in the US. - M_

There was a longer pause between the sending of this message and Matt's reply than there had been before. _Well if near's there than thats where you have to be – m_

Mello's chest went cold. _My people are here, too, coincidentally. - M_

_What does people mean? How did you get a task force when you cant even drive or make phone calls or message people back. lol_

_I have F__amily._ Mello flexed his fingers a couple times, hovering above the keys. _Like I said. I talked to my Dad. Hynek. - M_

With a lead like that, Mello was certain Matt's googling would stir up the parts of the story Mello didn't feel comfortable putting into words.

Ten and a half minutes later, Matt sent _Are you ok?_

When Mello didn't reply, Matt uploaded another file. In it, a photo of a stoic naked man with his hair on fire. So they were both uncomfortable.

_I'm about to be. -M_

_hahahahaha WHAT does that mean?_

_Idiot. It meant no. How's being number 1? - M_

_Who cares? How is being a gangster_

_Fine. I should sleep. - M_

_K. :( Send me a pic of the skyline before you go_

_Why? - M_

_I want to see what capitalist america looks like duh xx_

_Google it. - M_

_No man come on. it's weird that we aren't seeing the same like.. sun or whatever. It's lonely. It just keeps getting lonlier here and i hate it_

Mello sighed, stood, and moved to the window. He snapped a picture of the city lights. He could give Matt this much.

After sending the photo along with a goodnight, he closed the lid of his laptop and walked away.

It was lonely. It did keep getting lonelier.


	5. BLOOD, BODY

Within 24 hours of reconnecting with Matt, Mello really wanted to strangle him.

Mello had slept soundly through the grey onset of a slow sunrise, snoring over the whir of air condition, the early-morning honking of commuters below the window, and the low-battery honking from his smoke alarm, dreamless and forgetful. He woke with an uncanny giddy feeling to a message from Matt, and then felt the helium that had been building in his excited chest deflate all at once when he saw that Matt had not left him a joke or a goodmorning, but a bald faced threat and a lot of ugly typos.

_West LA huh? See any celebs there at 294 or 29 12th Avenue? Azelia Park, is it? ;) I cant beleive you fell for that! DAMN I'm good. Don't send people photos of RECOGNISABEL BUILDINGS you are right down the street from! I literally just google mapped you! Sleep tite in your... let me guess... 3rd floor flat? lol im coming over – m, Number One Genius_

_Go ahead._ Mello wrote back. _Come along over so I can choke you out, you fuckin asshole. - M_

He dragged a chair under the smoke alarm and punched it off. The edges of his drowsiness fractured to make way for gut-burning irritation.

_Hey don't get mad at me._ Matt replied. _Imagine if u made that mistake with someone else righ_t

There wasn't anyone else Mello would make mistakes with. Mello didn't like making mistakes. Matt got the clay, everyone else got ceramic. Fuck him for taking advantage of Mello's momentary lapse into nostalgic sentimentality.

_You of all people should understand how important my anonymity is, Matt, and how serious I'm going to take threats. I don't work at the local fucking McDonalds. -M_

_K sorry. So what's up?_

_I just woke up. - M_

Mello put the coffee on. It felt like everything in the apartment was making stressful, anxious noise. He didn't want Matt to come over. He just didn't.

_Hey check out what happens when you google "Los Angeles bus lost and found"_

Mello googled it. I get a lost and found website. S_o what? -M_

_So that's my website and I charge people like ten bucks to file a report lol. I'm going to buy a ticket to L.A._

_You're running a scam? Are you serious? -M_

_Yeah why? A re you going to come arrest me? ;)_

Mello sighed. _It's not a good time, Matt._ he wrote. _I'm not established yet. - M_

_:( K._

For the next week and a half, Mello kept in almost constant contact with Matt. Partially, he was worried that if he stopped texting him back Matt would storm his flat. Partially, he had missed having someone on his side.

Matt spent a lot of time waxing poetic about his various phishing scams, bragging about his bloating bank account, and reminding Mello that he could, at any moment, do whatever he wanted. Don't draw attention to yourself was Mello's most used phrase of 2004. Mello worried that if Matt left Wammy's early, it would set off some red flags. Mello wanted to keep Matt secret, irrelevant to the Kira case and safely anonymous. He kept Matt mollified by letting him help with other, unrelated tasks remotely, like looking over security camera footage and doxxing men he didn't get along with.

Still, Matt was a bit of a land mine; one wrong step and Mello knew he'd be paying hydro for two within 14 hours. He felt pressured to answer Matt's needling questions and give in when he begged for details. Matt was constantly pushing him to elebarote about his day to day life. Mello felt like a sand castle in a rising tide. Matt's relentless interest in Mello's deeds and movements rubbed like sandpaper against his instinct to keep his life private, even from his best friend. Matt could wring water from a stone.

But it wasn't all bad: in the lonely nights of his 15th year, it was a comfort to have someone to vent and be honest with. If Mello said he was frustrated, Matt would link him to an online Tetris multiplayer game and insist he relax, something no one else was able to get him to do. Learning that Matt had found a criminal path independently settled his worries about being judged by him. Matt took Mello's Mafia involvement so smoothly, Mello forgot that he'd ever felt shame about his choices.

_You're just insecure_ Matt said when Mello asked why Matt wasn't repulsed by the story about the hanging man in the basement. I_'m spending too much energy supporting you to spare any for like being grossed out by death or whatever._

Matt's support, it turned out, was exactly what Mello needed to impress Rod Ross, in the end.

That summer, Mello while Mello was still struggling to prove himself, he went on a routine surveillance job with Lorenzo and got a life-changing tip. Lorenzo had become a grudging convert to Mello's cult of personality, since Mello was such an inarguably good (though mouthy) soldier: an excellent shot, an intelligent strategic mastermind, and a fearless fighter. He'd started bringing Mello with him in his car often, treating him like a disciple, and telling him that his father would have liked what he'd made of himself. They parked in front of an office building to note the suspicious flickering of lights in the wee hours of the morning, and Lorenzo filled the time telling Mello about an enemy Rod Ross had been trying to flush out for the past two years.

'He's the last one keeping us down,' Lorenzo said, chewing on french fries between breaths, 'besides Kira. We all want to see that bastard's head stuffed and hung up over Rod's dining table.'

When Mello got home, he told Matt. _Find me a David Cox. - M_

_Sure thing_, Matt said, but it took him four months.

David Cox, a rival who had slaughtered several of Rod Ross' men during a dispute over cocaine, had apparently bought a hunting cabin up in Canada where he sat around four months out of the year and shot at moose. Matt found the paper trail when he discovered that a David Cox had run a hobby taxidermist website back in the 90s with a slightly grainy photo of himself holding the head of a carcass like a baby in his arms, and had paid for the domain with a credit card registered to his real identity: the same identity he'd bought the cabin with.

Mello could have kissed him. He packed his car for a weekend trip, loaded a rifle, and hit the road. He drove to the point of exhaustion, stopping in motels to crash, keeping himself energetic with caffeine and red bull and stimulants. His jittery foot stayed heavy on the gas pedal. This was it.

It was snowing in the country. Mello parked his new winter tires in a saggy snow bank on the side of an empty road and stomped out. In front, behind, and on either side of him was a chessboard of desolate winter road. Matt had said this wasteland, on these exact coordinates, was where David lived. Mello tromped out into a bare field, huddled in his fur coat wanting to kill someone, completely alone.

'Fucking bastard.' he muttered, biting one of his gloves off so he could double-check Matt's info. He swiveled a couple turns on one heel, looking out over hay fields and sparse trees all bundled up in frost.

_There's nothing here._ he wrote to Matt, sending a photo, too – of his angry red middle finger. _And I'm gonna fucking freeze to death. - M_

_Ohhhh ok. One sec I think there's some cell tower issues. Look for Township rd._

_Every fucking road is township road. - M_

_Yeah true. Ok go like 500m to the right and then 200m left and then check back in._

Mello cursed. He'd bought thick wool socks at a gas station on the drive up and stuffed them in his leather boots, but his toes still felt dry and heavy with a numb chill. He stomped back to the car. When he backed out onto the road, the snow scraped the undercarriage with a horrific tearing sound. He hated Canada. Why did Rod Ross' most hated enemy have to vacation in Canada? Most old assholes went to Florida. Mello had never wrecked a car in Florida, or had to wear long underwear.

He drove slowly under a solid blue, sunless sky. Unforgiving country spread and spread and spread before him. If he froze to death here, lost in the grid, wearing a toque that said "I Love Alberta Beef", he would haunt Matt forever and somehow kill him from beyond the veil.

_Ok. I'm at Township Road 203. - M_

_It's another little bit straight. Like 600m. His is the only driveway._

Mello drove another little bit straight, like 600m. Bushes were getting thicker along the side of the road, and trees more abundant. He drove 700, 800, 900m, turned around, and drove back to where he'd come from without finding a driveway.

I_t's defo there. Go slow or something idk,_ Matt said when Mello exasperatedly swore at him.

Mello went slow. He craned his neck, leaning over the steering wheel, squinting at icicle sparkles and grey twig bunches. On the left, around where Matt had said it would be, he finally spotted the overgrown, nearly invisible driveway. It was completely impassable in the car.

_I have to walk. - M_ he sent, hoping Matt understood that he meant to deliver this news scathingly.

The driveway stretched out into woodland. It was wide enough to be a road, but heavy with brown grass and snow up to Mello's mid thigh. Tiny paw print patterns criss-crossed the top layer of snow. It was nearly ten minutes of walking before Mello came upon a gate, which was closed. He went around, since there was no fence, only several No Trespassing signs posted on tree trunks. It took ten more minutes of trekking before the house came into sight – a crouching one floor cabin encased in the winter forest like a pupae.

Mello had carried a shotgun up with him, trudging hunched with it on his back while he picked one foot and then the other out of the deep snow. His pants were drenched and his legs were burning with cold. He wanted to kill someone.

A dog barked inside the cabin. Dogs were not a problem. People felt safe with dogs, but dogs didn't usually keep people safe from other people. When the door opened and David appeared on the threshold, the dog came bounding out with a wagging tail, making noise to raise the birds out of the treetops, and bounced past him to piss against the wall of a nearby woodshed.

'David Cox.' Mello said, leveling the rifle and pulling the trigger.

The man had already ducked back into the house, lifting his own gun, but Mello's bullet slid through his arm and made him fall. In that time, Mello leapt forward, ready to hit him again. The dog ran away into the woods in fear at the sound of the shots.

'Fucker -' Rod Ross' part-time hated rival and part-time cowardly cabin vacationer hissed, shooting off to Mello's right and hitting nothing.

Mello stomped David's hand with his boot and kicked the gun away. His feet hurt so fucking bad. He wanted to sit at the fire and tell Matt that he was successful but furious, tell Matt to never make him walk without snowshoes up a January hill again. He shot David between the eyes.

Mello dragged the body outside onto the porch and out of the way so he could close the door. There was a fire burning and a pot of coffee on the stove inside. David Cox had been reading a book about a woman who had survived a ship wreck by eating spiders in a rain-forest or something; it was sitting open to a part about eating spiders, anyway, face down on the table. Mello closed it properly. David wouldn't need his place marked, and Mello had a thing about spines getting cracked; he always used a bookmark.

_Thanks Matt. - M_ he sent, when he'd pulled the socks from his feet and slid a chair over to the fire to bask.

_Np._

Mello hunkered down in the chair. David had piled pillows on top of the seat, to make it comfortable on older bones. When the dog scratched at the door, Mello let it in and it whined a while and then lay in a corner and fell asleep.

David had a lot of trophies hanging on the dining-room wall. Maybe, Mello thought, looking up at a looming stuffed elk head, Rod Ross was a fan of irony.

In a humourous mood, Mello decided he really should saw David's head off. It would be good proof of his incredible success, and it would make some of the men piss their pants in fear of ever crossing him, which could be helpful.

There was an axe in a stump outside, which Mello had seen on his way up the driveway. He trudged back into the light snowfall and pulled it out. He'd never swung an axe, but he didn't expect it was that hard. Executioners used to do this. Judge, jury, executioner – that was what everyone thought was unfair about Kira, that he could be all three. The difference here was that Mello was doing his own dirty work; Kira killed like a coward.

He took a few practise swings at the wooden porch stairs, getting used to the heft and reverberating thunk that made his arms shake, before starting to hack at David's neck. By the end of it, his hair was sweating and the snow was red in a splatter around the headless body.

He carried the head down the driveway and put it in the cooler in the trunk of his car, squished against a mostly melted bag of ice, some oranges, a half-full carton of milk, and a leftover gas station turkey sandwich. Replacing the ice at every gas stop, he managed to keep it fresh for display in L.A.

When he showed it to Lorenzo, since Lorenzo was his closest point of contact to Rod Ross, Lorenzo said, 'Oh fucking holy Mary Mother of God.'

When he showed it to Rod Ross, Rod Ross said, 'Jesus shit, kid.'

David's severed head had staring glassy eyes. It was never hung anywhere – they burnt it. Apparently Mello was the only one who had truly thought it was funny.

Fully appreciated or not, it was with this act that Mello gained real deference in the American Mafia.

'I had a feeling about you, you know.' Rod Ross said, pouring them both shots of tequila after the head had been whisked away by a subordinate.

Mello, smug, crossed his legs and reclined on the couch. There was no such thing as "having a feeling". Over the past year and a half, Mello had fought tooth and nail so that guys like Rod Ross could pretend they'd "had a feeling" about him. That Rod Ross now thought of him as a promising mob prodigy was purely because Mello was the best and had demonstrated it, over and over, through great acts of criminal genius.

They talked for over two hours. Rod Ross was curious about Mello's rosary, about his past. He asked Mello if he thought God or guns were better protection. He wanted to know what made Mello feel safer: the rosary beads catching the light off the orange lamps or the handgun he'd taken to wearing just as prominently?

Mello didn't believe in God and had only ever been on the offensive. No time for sitting around feeling safe. He said, 'Probably neither.'

'Kira killed God.' Rod Ross said. So he thought guns, now, but used to think the Lord would save his soul as long as he confessed. 'We both grew up Catholic, huh...' he speculated. 'Angry and catholic.' He cleared his throat a lot when he talked. 'Kira's made us a pair of angry ex-Catholics.'

Actually, Mello was still growing up, would rather receive praise than give it, and had never been interested in admitting he might have done anything wrong, but whatever. He nodded. Let Rod Ross befriend him. This was another perception that could only benefit him: the false belief that Mello had ever been a normal human, and could be sympathised with by brutish older men.

'You like motorcycles, Mello?' Rod asked. He poured them another round. 'You look like the type.'

Mello shrugged. 'I like 'em.' In Prague, he'd watched Evzen drape himself over the handlebars of a Honda with saliva heavy in his mouth, jealous and bothered.

'I have one I might want you to have.'

Mello was a favourite, he realised. He was the favourite, now. 'Thank you.'

_That's kinda hot,_ Matt said when Mello told him about the motorbike a couple hours later.

Mello had flopped in his red velvet armchair, still wearing some new leather gear he'd bought on the way home. He felt kinda hot. He'd ridden the bike back, still high on the feeling of being the fucking best. His legs shining under the lamplight were suggestive from this angle, long. _You wanna see it? - M_

_Oh fuck yeah_

Mello wanted Matt to see. The change Mello felt in himself, the change he saw in the bathroom mirror. The edge on his cheekbones and the hardening muscles on his arms. The motorcycle, and Mello, who rode the motorcycle and carried a gun. Matt would get what it meant.

He took the rattling elevator down to the garage. He'd left the bike in his assigned parking spot, the number 308. He thought a motorcycle really suited him. It was giddy, having it. Gangster.

First he tried taking a picture of the bike with his hand – fingerless gloves and black nails – holding one of handlebars. The angle was too weird. He tried straddling it and taking pictures from above his head, but kept getting photos of the garage floor and the blank wall with just the blond top of his hair or a suggestion of his shoulder in frame. When he managed to get his face and the bike underneath him, his eyes looked too big and his torso too skinny. Finally, he settled on a picture with his top half cut off, leaning back on the bike saddle. Legs, big belt buckle, giant fuck-you boots.

Fucking embarrassing. Fucking embarrassing thing to do, posing like a scene queen with his new bike in a parking lot. He sent it. Don't save it anywhere. -M

_Very cool,_ Matt sent several minutes later.

T_ell me what you're doing. -M_

_Uh nothing really. P ulling an all-nighter. I'm putting up a few porno banner ads. Just pics of my knees and armpits and shit with like "enter your credit card details to see more!" and then obviously there isnt more._

Mello snorted. _Isn't there? - M_

_Depends who's asking I guess. Are you into elbows_

_I just wanna see the dumb ads. -M_

Matt uploaded a file titled .jpg. It was a slightly grainy, fleshy closeup of what looked to be the crease of his knee. Mello recognised a scar._ 20 quid for the rest._

_I'm not giving you any money. -M_

_Well Mello quite frankly Im not whoring myself out for free_

_What if I say I miss seeing you. - M_, Mello almost deleted it. He left the message open on his laptop and got up to have a glass of water, first, and then left again after he'd sent it to brush his teeth in nervous anticipation of what Matt might have to say about it.

There was a picture waiting for him when he returned – Matt sitting on the floor of one of Wammy's yellow tile shower stalls, holding a broom in one hand and wearing a pile of toilet paper on his head. He looked exhausted. Artificial light gave him a waxy sheen, settled unhappily in the hollows of his cheeks, dulled his copper hair. His eyes were dim and staring from under heavy half lids, and his eyelashes looked clumped or wet. He was wearing the same pyjamas he'd always worn, playing the same game-boy (it was balancing on one of his bony knees like a teeter-totter), and making a familiar face. Mello's stomach shrank at the sight of it. So ridiculous and staged, more purposeful than even Mello's lusty attempt at a glamour shot, but somehow completely natural and real. It was definitely Matt. Wan, weird, wonderful.

_You already know I miss you so whatever. Sucks having no footrest. And I keep falling asleep on the floor and no one puts a pillow under my head :(_

_Grow up and do it yourself. -M_

_Aw but I dont want to. Asshole_

_Are you really hanging out in the fucking shower? -M_

_Ya im dirty_

_You're showering in your pyjamas? -M_

_They are dirty too :)_

_You haven't changed. -M_

_Still wearing the same underwear i was when you left_

_Mello rolled his eyes. I hope you're using soap. -M_

_I'm using bleach but thx for looking out for my health and higene xxxxx_

_What's the broom for? -M_

_You had a gun so i wanted a weapon too_

Mello had forgotten – he always wore a gun, now, and had become blind to it. _Overcompensating? -M_

_It's meant to be comparitive but its a little too small. Unfortunately the eiffel tower wasnt available on short notice. Why? Do you want a side by side_

_Holy shit. He did. Yes. -M_

_You first pussy xoxox_

Mello could feel a bead of sweat run down his ribcage. Shame he wasn't able to keep the photo of Matt; he wanted to keep it. He was picturing the sharper, longer calved, ruffled bathroom warrior sharing breath with him like they used to, picturing himself in the halls of Wammy's, older now and still subject to Matt's affections. He couldn't decide if it was more painful to be nostalgic for the vague, innocent past, or to speculate about a rough, edgier could-have-been.

What Matt didn't know, because it would only inspire him to bash his shoulder against Mello's boundaries instead of just jiggling politely at the door handle, was that Mello sometimes got hard thinking about Matt being here with him.

He hadn't shown Matt his updated face. He snapped a picture of himself back-lit by the light from the stove, glowering with his middle finger up.

_3/10. Didnt fufill the requirements of the assignment. Is that mac and cheese on the counter behind u? Can i have some?_

_It is. I want to contest my score – I fulfilled the requirements out of frame so I think I've earnt at least an extra point -M_

_Hey dont put your dick near my mac and cheese :(_

_How was I supposed to know you wouldn't want that, Matt? -M_

_Are you actually naked? :o_

_No, Matt. You saw what I'm wearing. -M_

_Right right. Close enough tbh. When and like why did you start wearing leather pants_

It was sort of because they were practical, since he was a biker now. It was mostly because when he'd tried them on at the leather shop, he'd felt challengingly sexy. Being short, young, and mid-ranked wasn't turning any heads. This might. He had been keeping an eye out for a fashion direction that fit him and made him stand out since discovering the power of Evzen's cool clothes to transform his self-perception, and these all black bell bottom lace-ups were really bringing it all together. _When I bought them, and because I wanted to buy them. Why are you wearing the same shirt you've been wearing since you were 12? -M_

_I can take it off if it pisses you off so much :/_

_In that case, it does. -M_

Matt would back down. They had been stuck in a game of gay chicken with one another for the past 3 years. Mello waited ten, and then twenty minutes for Matt's joking excuse -

\- and then opened a file with a photo of Matt hunched, legs crossed, shirtless, with his curled spine under the running shower. His hair was still mostly dry, and his goggles were on. The broom was propped against his shoulder. He'd introduced an additional element to his bathroom tableau: he had plastered two sheets of what looked like wet homework pages against his chest, so his skin rippled with printer ink. _Better?_ he sent, in another file.

_Weirder. -M_

_Thanks xx ;) This is why people pay the big bucks for my porn ads_

The thing about Matt was that he was hauntingly beautiful. Mello had been trying really hard to be attractive and to find good angles in mirrors, keeping his hair clean and brushed, his teeth white, his pants fitting right, working out, and tackling the difficult task of solidifying his personal aesthetic. Matt just sat around being striking by accident.

Months ago, Mello had given in and resigned himself to ending his days frustrated by Matt. His nightly routine started with shutting his laptop and turning off the lights in the house, drawing the curtains, checking the stove and the locks, double checking that the windows were closed, and shutting his bedroom door. It ended with shucking off his clothes, rolling onto bed, and masturbating with the fan pointed at his fluttering bangs, dreaming in general about the odd collection of things he'd started to think were sexy: a boy snorting cocaine out of a cigarette, wet biceps throwing wooden boxes full of guns into the back of a truck, and Matt's miserable face.

At least he didn't pay for Matt's scammy porn ads.


	6. LOSS, LUST

Thank you to the lovely Guest reviewer (s?) for your comments; I really appreciate it! It's been a rough go lately so I am writing more slowly than my normal, but it's coming along. 3 Hope this is alright, it's a bit different from normal. Was in the mood for ... softness :P

* * *

The American Mafia had to answer to a teenager with the same haircut all good Catholic schoolboys had worn in Prague in the 90s; sitting unconventionally on a zebra print couch, a relic of old world criminality displayed like a Playboy spread: Mello.

Fuck the title of Don – as he'd given away the name L, Mello let Rod Ross have it. Whether they called Mello boss or not, it was him who had become the head of the bloated corpse of Organized Crime, and he would be the one Kira wet his prison cot over.

It was so glorious to enact his devilish plans with this sparkling pride, this champagne bubble of self-love lifting his spirits and spurring his manic resolve. It was erotic to be so powerful, to dominate the syndicate, to pistol whip men old enough to be his father. He liked telling the President of the United States to suck his dick over the phone. He jerked off once imagining it actually happening.

God, Mello had fucking loved himself right up until he sloughed all his perfect skin off in an explosion.

It had been Matt's idea – not the burning alive part, but the dynamite. Matt was insane about explosives. He did the math for Mello's missile, he told Mello he wished he could have seen the helicopter blow, wanted to watch debris fly up close and in-person – _shame for the dude who died, though_, he said. Matt didn't give a fuck about anything and he hadn't met enough people in his secluded orphanage life to know how to give a fuck about anyone. He was 18, now, and actively trying to book a ticket into Mello 's personal space. He was also a talented, callous, and beautiful cyber-terrorist who frequently praised Mello's nefarious deeds and sent him pictures of his new tongue piercing pressed into assorted phallic objects.

Everything was so great before the explosion, before the destruction of the pretty face Mello had made his signature and based all his self esteem on, that when Mello was crushed afterwards by an equal and opposite karmic dread, he had texted Matt I'll pick you up at the airport. - M within days of his bandages coming off.

Looking in the mirror had become a ritual for Mello; his reflection was his altar. He was fortified by the sight of himself well dressed and dangerous. The effect was entirely changed when he studied himself scarred. His cheek was an angry, dark, rippling landscape. His hair had been singed off and was only curling around the tops of his ears now, so the ghastly melted mar dominated his head. He felt like a victim for the first time ever. He felt ugly.

Matt had been worried, of course, when Mello told him that he was recovering on a cot in Hollywood with a bleeding burn and a killer fever.

_Now you're hot in two ways lol_ was how he expressed that worry.

They had matured into something almost identical to sexting without acknowledging or labeling it. Mello was sometimes 90% sure they were in a casual long distance romantic relationship, and sometimes thought they were both kidding. Mello still sent Matt a lot of risque pictures. Matt noticed when he stopped.

_You can show waist down since you're so self conscious :/_ he sent when Mello told him that the scar that wrapped around his chest and throttled his scalp had rejected a graft.

_I'm not self conscious, Matt. It's not something you'd wanna see. -M_

_Don't tell me what I like to see :(_

When Mello sent him a frowning mirror selfie, just a photo of himself in baggy sweatpants with a pink stripe of damaged tissue splitting him in half, Matt said _Holy shit you look BADASS! DAMN!_

That reaction was part of why Mello told him to go ahead and come on over. He'd always promised Matt that he would put him up in an apartment when he moved out of Wammy's, anyway. He could rely on Matt's devotion to him; Matt had proved over and over that he was loyal to Mello's cause no matter how bloody and dirty the work got.

To be honest, Mello was also impatient to see his best friend. Now, he felt like he needed someone on his side more than he ever had. He felt alone and destroyed and needful. He had spent years sexualising himself until he really believed he was sexy. How was he supposed to think of himself now?

He could do with hearing Matt call him _BADASS!_ a couple more times.

He drove his shiny new custom Camaro to LAX to meet Matt, dripping with aloe gel and apprehension. Traffic was infuriatingly bad, which gave him plenty of time to grind his teeth.

He would have been early even if Matt's flight hadn't been delayed by 20 minutes, so he bought himself a coffee while he watched the gate for brushes of red hair, suggestions of stripes. He didn't know what Matt would wear, but he could guess: Matt had a thing for this one shirt, and rarely wore anything else. Finally, he spotted Matt shuffling around a family of four, looking tired and slumped. The only major change in his appearance since Wammy's was the addition of a wallet chain, which almost looked cool but became nerdy when Matt pulled a Kirby wallet out and put his passport away inside. He bloomed when he looked up from his fidgeting and saw Mello standing there at the end of the corridor.

Matt's enthusiasm boiled Mello's stomach acid a little – Matt hurried to close the distance between them, a duffel bag banging against his hip as he speed-walked through the crowds, and wrapped Mello up in his arms without hesitation, squeezing.

'I can take that.' Mello said, indicating Matt's book bag, which he'd lowered to the ground at their feet when he flung himself at Mello's chest.

'Damn.' Matt breathed. 'You look so different. But like the same.'

'Sure.' Mello liked when people stared at him, but not like this. He twitched his hair over his raw left cheek. 'Let's go.'

Matt whistled when he saw the car. He had a big goofy grin on, contrasting the heavy baggage under his eyes. Something in his face wasn't connecting anymore.

'It's a bit of a drive.' Mello said.

'What's a little more travel, hey.' Matt said. 'It's fucking hot here, huh? Jesus. It was raining when I left.'

'It doesn't rain much in L.A.'

'No kidding. So what's up?' Matt was alternating between staring dazedly out the window and looking at Mello with a lopsided, baffled smile as they pulled away from the airport and onto the freeway.

'I got the day off to settle you in.'

'Brilliant.'

'You brought a lot of shit.'

'Yeah, equipment. My businesses don't... like, run on air.'

Matt's "businesses" had evolved from basic phishing scams and false advertisements to credit card fraud, identity theft, exploits. Some of his activities were pointlessly destructive fun; others were lucrative, multi-tiered ventures that had made him an independent millionaire without Roger ever knowing about it. It was thanks in large part to his generosity with his ill gotten fortune that Mello had been able to fund many of his own big moves before he'd gained access to the Mafia's purse and started investing on his own.

Without Mello, Matt would have been fine. 'I don't know why you want on the case.' Mello said while they drove. 'You can just live here. Rent free.'

'Eh. I'd get bored.' Matt said.

Mello cleared his throat, exaggerating leaning over the steering wheel to check if the road was clear so he could look at Matt when he said, 'You don't trust me to entertain you?'

He'd forgotten how awkward and halting Matt's laugh was, how red his ears got. It added charm to the increasingly bold person Mello had been getting to know over text. 'I trust you with whatever, dude.' Matt said. 'You know.'

Matt's electronics ended up everywhere in Mello's apartment. They coated the floor like stringy tar. It would be cumbersome to put so much as a coffee mug on Mello's glass table in the living room, now. Mello offered Matt a drawer in his dresser to put pants and socks in, and a few hangers for all three of his threadbare old shirts. Matt simultaneously exploded over the space and shrunk into it – he took up a lot of visible floor and not a lot of any space that mattered. He kept his arms close to his sides and his narrow shoulders hunched as he followed Mello around on a tour.

When the packing was done, Matt put his feet up on the couch cushions and tilted his head back over one arm, pulling a cigarette out of the pocket of his jeans and putting it in his teeth. 'Do you know how to smoke on a plane?' he asked Mello, meeting his eye upside down.

'I wouldn't need to know that.'

'Just do it, is how. What are they gonna do, shoot you down?' he chuckled, and then sighed. 'Well, actually, I do it into the drain in the sink. I'm sort of tired. Am I sleeping with you?'

'Only one bed.'

'Now?'

'If you want.'

Matt chewed the inside of his cheek a lot. Mello had already noticed, and they'd only been back together for 4 hours. He followed Mello into the bedroom, biting at his lip and saying 'this house is sort of shit. Why isn't there a floor?'

Mello had ripped most of the carpets up in the apartment, since the carpet had gone mouldy, and put two big shaggy rugs down in the living room. 'I don't know, Matt. I don't spend a lot of time here.'

'Cool, whatever.'

Matt dived into the bed. He really was tired, evidently, because he was asleep within minutes. There wasn't even time to wonder if he had anything other than sleeping in mind. Mello laid down with his back to Matt, turned the lamp on, and read his novel silently while Matt dozed.

Mello hadn't taken a day off in a long, long time. He couldn't let himself get used to it.

After an hour, Matt shuffled around and put his nose into Mello's hair, exhaling deeply. His hands curled at Mello's back.

'Are you awake?' Mello whispered, shifting slightly to peek at Matt. There was no answer. Matt's face was slack, and he was still. Mello rolled onto his back and lifted his arm up so he could scratch Matt's hair with his acrylics, making stripes behind his ears. Just like he used to. Matt's breath on his shoulder was warm and sweet.

It was hours before Matt jerked awake. He settled his head more definitely onto Mello's arm. 'I was scared this would be weird.' he said.

'You make everything weird.' Mello told him. He flicked his page, bookmarked his place, and put the book aside. There was no point reading when Matt was talking.

'You know what I meant.' Matt yawned. He flung his arm over Mello's stomach. 'I like your crop top thing. It's fun and flirty.'

'Is that what it is?' Mello grumbled.

'Yeah, why? Were you going for like, something else?'

Mello rolled his eyes.

'And I like your nails. Do that thing on my back with your nails.'

'You're demanding.'

'I'm trying to soak it all in.' Matt's voice started to get quiet. He fell asleep again for a couple minutes, leaving Mello to his book again. 'Hey, what time is it?' he asked when he opened his eyes again.

'1700.'

'Can we order in something to eat?'

'Sure.'

'Can I shoot your gun?'

'No.'

'Do you have any weed?'

'No.'

'Damn.'

Mello called in a pizza order while Matt whispered 'ask for extra sausage' in his ear.

'Do you mean that?' Mello asked gruffly, covering the mouthpiece with his hand.

'No, I want pepperoni.'

'Half pepperoni and half greek.'

Matt smoked in bed. The smell and sight of smoke made Mello nostalgic. Everything Matt did was like a balm on his sore spots. Matt had a cooling effect on anger.

'You keep doing that.' Matt said, when Mello flattened his bangs over his scar before laying down again, face to face with him. 'Covering it up with your hair or whatever. Does it hurt?'

'Not badly.'

Matt touched the sensitive edges of the scarring flesh with one of his soft fingertips. 'I'm starving.' he whispered. 'When's the pizza coming?'

'I literally just called.' Mello whispered back. 'It's gonna be at least twenty minutes.'

Matt's mouth started to twitch. 'But maybe, uh...' - he snorted - 'maybe I could get some sausage now.'

Mello stared. 'Really, Matt?'

'I mean... or we could just keep gazing into each other's eyes. Whatever, really. Up to you. Hey -'

Mello leant forward and pressed his lips onto Matt's. Just to shut him the fuck up. It was so easy. It was as logical as shaking someone's hand after meeting for the first time.

Matt said, 'Oh shit, finally, right? I was like, not even, like... I didn't actually -'

Mello had to kiss him again to shut him up. Matt wasn't a good kisser. He held his mouth open and froze like a deer in headlights. At least he smelt good, heady and hot. He felt like a coat-rack under Mello's searching hands, but that coat-rack was Matt's body. If it was Matt's body, it was everything he needed it to be.

By the time the pizza came, Mello had sucked on the tongue ring and given Matt a couple hickeys. Matt liked being bitten. He liked tracing the lines of Mello's stomach and digging his fingers into Mello hips. He didn't stop breathing, talking, whispering, licking his lips, fluttering his eyelashes. Mello wanted to hold him down and make him be still and make him quiet. He was starting to, starting to push one of Matt's wrists into the mattress and roll on top of him, when the doorbell rang.

'Great.' Matt said, jumping up and smoothing down his shirt. 'I'll get it.' He scurried out into the hallway.

Mello wandered into the living room. He watched Matt sweep cords off the coffee table and put the pizza box on top. 'Do you have beer?' Matt asked.

'No. We can go get some.'

Matt shrugged. 'Tap water's good too.'

Mello didn't feel like breaking the seal on the apartment. He sat next to Matt.

'Are you against the death penalty?' Matt asked, around a mouthful of crust.

'Are you going to eat the crust and leave the rest?'

Matt shrugged. 'I'm going to have some of the pepperonis.'

'Infuriating.'

'Yeah. So? Are you?'

'I don't care.'

'So like, the problem with Kira is that Near has a problem with him.'

'Holy fuck, Matt! Take that back!'

'Nah. Think about it.'

'I won't. I have watched Kira kill. You know what happened in Prague.'

'I've watched you kill in, like, my mind's eye, and I only want to take you down in a metaphorical, sexual way.'

'Kira killed my Family.'

'And does that make you sad?'

Mello's fingers twitched. 'None of your business.'

'I was just wondering.'

They lapsed into relative silence. Mello put a glam-rock album on. Matt made fun of the cheetah print ankle socks Mello was wearing.

Mello wanted to rediscover himself, again and again, until he found someone he liked nestled somewhere in his guts like an entombed fetus.

He had hoped it would be good enough for Matt to accept him, and to think his sins were cool, but actually he wanted Matt not to pick up on them so intuitively and point them out so brashly. The pretty veneer he'd constructed had obviously burnt away. If only he could ask Matt: who should I make myself out to be now? How would you like me? Unfortunately for him, Matt seemed to really like the burnt-out husk, so he wouldn't be any help.

If there was a God, Mello would definitely want to fucking kill him. He would kill Kira, at the very least. Matt didn't get that. Matt didn't understand hatred or envy or passionate blood-lust and Matt didn't really get image either – he didn't try very hard, socially, or know how to try hard. He didn't make any friends or influence any people. He was simple. He just loved and was loyal, and made bombs and scammed people.

Luckily, Matt's mood wasn't dampened by the seriousness of their over-dinner talk. He shifted sideways on the couch after they'd finished eating, slipped his greasy hands into Mello's, linking their fingers, and tipped his head forward until his lips brushed Mello's. Matt was impervious to tone changes, as well as Mello's moods. Totally unflappable.

His limbs had a way of finding Mello's soft spots – Matt's knee dug into Mello's thigh when he crawled into his lap, his chin knocked Mello's cheek while they tumbled backwards onto the couch cushions. Mello started to get impatient, manipulating Matt's body a little roughly out of defensive necessity, to save himself from bruises. He shoved Matt's shoulder into the back of the couch and pulled him by the hair until he was draped more delicately over Mello, like a bird's wing, with his feathery hair curtaining them off from the rest of the world.

It was so indulgent to be confident in each other, like this. Mello wondered why he'd ever doubted the sincerity of their flirting, now that he felt Matt hard against his leg.

'Can you not say anything?' Matt muttered when Mello pushed his thigh against his crotch. He had his full weight on Mello, his full mouth on Mello. What a fucking idiot, to think Mello hadn't noticed his erection a long time ago.

'I'm not.'

'But talk to me.' Matt said.

'What do you want me to say?'

'Whatever. Anything.'

Mello told him about how, two days before, he had gotten shorted on his change at a drive-through window. He told Matt it had pissed him off so bad when he noticed that he'd wanted to take it out on someone. He said, 'I would have turned around and shot every fucking cashier in that joint if the parking lot was empty, but I couldn't find a space' while he fumbled Matt's jeans button open and started to feel the fabric on the front of Matt's boxers.

'I'll give you 2 dollars if you want it that bad.' Matt said. He had put his face into Mello's clavicle to hide, but Mello could feel how hot his skin was, so what was the point?

'It was the principle of the thing. I was thinking about how easily people still think they can cheat me.'

'Who ever cheated you?' Matt asked, and then said, 'I'm gonna -' and then came.

'Just that one person as far as I can think. And L. And now you. That was fast.'

'I'm not cheating you; I'll do you.'

'Wash your hands first.' Mello said.

'Wash yours.'

'Yes. Wash mine.' He put his fingers at Matt's mouth.

Matt opened it and licked the cum off. Mello had wanted him to do that as punishment for all the teasing pictures Matt had sent him of licking sign posts and staplers and his own middle finger.

Matt struggled clumsily off Mello to go wash his hands when he was done.

Mello liked looking at his own legs almost as much as he liked looking at Matt between them. He opened his fly and stroked himself a few times while he waited for Matt, thinking about how hot he must look, how good his hand must have been for Matt to have finished so fast, how long Matt must have been waiting – touching himself to Mello's image. Matt masturbating over him was one of Mello's favourite fantasies.

'Oh, shit.' Matt said when he walked back around the couch. 'Can I -'

Mello snatched his sleeve and helped him maneuver his clumsy ass back onto the couch, since he was so useless. 'Sit back down,' he snapped, 'and why don't you use your mouth?'

'Ok, yeah.'

'You don't talk.' Mello said, voicing his earlier inspiration. 'Yeah. I'm gonna shut you the fuck up.'

Mello had a few favourite wet dreams. One was the thing about Matt stroking himself while he looked at a picture of Mello, another was Matt wanting him so bad that he came in his pants over it. Another, putting his gun in Matt's face and making him lick it.

Matt probably knew what he'd done, with those pictures he'd been sending over the past year, because he was grinning ear to ear when he licked Mello from root to tip.

'Actually, will you suck off my gun?' Mello panted, searching for it where it had slipped down from his shucked waistband.

'Are you serious?' Matt answered, pausing with his chin touching the inside of Mello's thigh.

'Yes.'

'Ok, yeah. Is that safe?'

'No.'

'Ok, yeah, I will. Give it here.'

To Mello's delight, Matt made up for his poor kissing technique by swallowing long, tubular things like he'd been practising. He probably had been. Fuck, he definitely had been. Mello helped him pump his cock with one hand while he held his glock steady, watching Matt spit on it.

'I can swallow if you tell me when.' Matt said. 'Like I'll put your dick back in my mouth.'

'Oh, can you?'

'I mean, probably.'

Mello laughed. 'Let's find out.' He put the gun on the coffee table, on top of Matt's fucking messy wires, and pushed Matt's head back down. Matt seemed to like being dragged around and talked to like that. Mello liked talking to him like that, too, and pulling his hair.

When Mello came, thinking about slapping Matt and telling him to suck it, imagining just this same scene as the one in front of him, but a little more extreme, Matt sputtered most of it back out. Mello just made him eat it again. No problem. He liked watching Matt suck his own fingers.

'You're surprisingly useful at cleaning that up' he said, patting Matt's cheek, 'for such a picky eater.'

'Oh shit, Mello, that's so funny, thank you.'

'Anytime.'

They looked at each other. Matt was bobbing his head a little, agreement or embarrassed squirm. 'I might go back to bed.' he said after a moment. 'I have a lot of sleep to catch up on.'

Mello followed him, though he wasn't particularly tired. He wanted to be there when Matt sighed and cozied up to him, to feel the warmth of his breath on the back of his neck. He let Matt hug him tightly from behind, nose on his neck and knees slotted like puzzle pieces. It was good to be wanted.


	7. MATRIMONY, MORTIFICATION

'We haven't really changed at all, huh?' Matt mumbled to Mello in the lonely pre-dawn of a morning after. He was feeling with his fingers along Mello's pectoral muscles, looking for scars to trace. 'I mean, you at least changed your shirt, but other than that...'

Mello was not wearing a shirt. He was half burnt and half living flesh, bare. He was undead. He had buried the boy from Wammy's and risen as this gory new creature. He felt like an open wound. He bled all over. His heart had been bleeding on Matt for the week and half they'd been together, and his body had been literally bleeding on the sheets. He was very offended by Matt's insinuation. 'Speak for yourself.' he snapped.

'I just mean... you still sort of self-sabotage.' Matt persisted, breathing audibly, brushing his thumb along the fiery seam where Mello's skin was split in two. 'It's hard to watch. It was hard to hear about, too, but like... it's worse to watch.'

Mello grimaced. 'I fuckin' don't, Matt, I do my best -'

'Eh. Sometimes I think you like feeling like you got screwed, and nothing's your fault. Like, you're all pissed because, uh, Near won in the end, but... you actually gave up. I'm just telling you how you look from over here.'

'I didn't let Near become L because I had given up, Matt.' Mello twitched his shoulder out from under Matt's head so it thunked down on the pillow.

'No, I just mean, it seems like you gave up willingly so no one could actually say you lost, you know? Like, "I didn't even want it anyway", you know? You just nuke everything when your back's up against the wall.'

Mello sat up against the headboard. It was cool and shadowy in the bedroom. He didn't like the conversation, but he could never muster the same anger against Matt that he could for anyone else. He leant up on an elbow and looked down at Matt's tired freckled face pressed into the black pillowcases, red and white like a bad joke. 'Should I cook?'

Matt nodded and sat up, too. He reached into the darkness for the plate of ketamine lines he'd abandoned the night before. He was shaggy and covered in bruises from the wrists to the junction of his collarbones to his soft stomach, wrapped in a sheet. His outline in front of the window was grey and vague, slouching and sniffing. Keeping him at Wammy's for all those long years had been important, but now Mello couldn't remember how he'd slept alone. Peacefully, probably. With pride intact. Mello started to press his knuckles into Matt's back, shifting the skin. 'Ouch.' Matt said. He stayed hunched forward, curled like a question mark over his outstretched legs.

'You're tense. What do you even have to be tense about?'

Matt's shoulders rolled in a lazy shrug. 'Could you make pancakes?'

'Sure.'

Mello was spinning out of control, again. He needed a change. He had scheduled a move to Japan, planning to drag Matt with him, this time. They left tomorrow, early. He couldn't scratch an itch that was under his skin, but he could move to Japan and hope it didn't follow. So maybe Matt was right about this one thing; that he restarted when it started to look like he was losing.

Mello untangled himself from the twisted duvet and wandered through the house turning lights on. The microwave clock was flashing 04.29. Mello often sacrificed sleep for time with Matt. He was pulled taut between the major motivations of his life – a minor obsession with the thought of marrying Matt the way his parents had once been married, the way Dmitri and Darling had been married; and the pit he'd fallen into with Kira. Kira _ had _to die - so that Mello could live out his criminal fantasy, could recapture the feeling that had so charmed him when he'd briefly tasted domesticity in Prague. He could deprive himself until then.

Matt kissed Mello on the jaw when he came into the kitchen, grabbing his hips from behind and burying his face in Mello's shoulder. He was warm and naked except for his mismatched socks. He smelt of cigarette smoke, coconut water, and old dust.

'Can you handle boiling a cup of water?' Mello asked.

'I guess.' Matt yawned and stepped away to crouch in front of the stove and riffle noisily in the drawer for a pot. He lit the stove and then meandered out of the kitchen again, flicking his lighter. He came back with a pair of loose pajama pants on, an ashtray in one hand and his Gameboy in the other. He settled at the little two-seater table that was pushed against one of the kitchen walls and started to play Tetris, slowly smoking while the water boiled.

Mello enjoyed cooking. It was a small accomplishment to cook something, and he liked starting the day with an accomplishment.

When he put a plate of plain, flat pancakes in front of Matt, he liked that he was looking after Matt's body. Also for Matt, a hot mug of water. For himself, black coffee.

'Thank you.' Matt drawled.

'Uhuh.' Mello scooped raspberry jam onto his pancake. Their kitchen light penetrated the darkness only as far as the table and the edge of the doorway into the living room. Beyond their space of light, nothing. Nothing else existed.

The pancakes were so good. Mello's best yet, maybe. He'd added lemon juice. He watched Matt cut his stack into eights and slowly lift a forkful to his mouth, gently chew, swallow his Adam's apple, and tap ash into the ashtray. Matt moved like a dream underwater, all his limbs dragged by some otherworldly friction. No one else on Earth was like Matt. Mello loved him so fiercely it ripped his heart raw, and he was numb with the terror of love's enormity and power.

When the dishes were cleared, Matt wandered into the livingroom and flicked the Saturday morning cartoons on. Round and childish noises distracted from the ambiance they'd been nursing over breakfast. Matt was such a contradictory man, so overgrown in his criminality and his habits and so stunted in his tastes and his emotional range. He had some remnants of a baby's face on his cheeks, weird sitting on the bird-like frailty of his shoulders.

Matt liked to work with the AC blasting, the fridge humming, the TV mumbling, and the CD player on. He was still doing a lot of his own scammy odd jobs, since Mello was so jealous of the Kira case and only threw Matt the scraps, keeping the meat and the bones and the future glory for himself.

Matt filled the house with smoke and noise all morning and napped in the afternoon, leaving Mello alone with a blue silence.

Mello had never managed to recreate the warm atmsophere of Prague in his own home, despite the red carpets and orange lamps and gold plated religious knicknacks he'd scattered around. He didn't have busyness here the way they had busyness there; he had work to grind on and news to keep informed of, not housework to putter with and newspapers to browse. He hoped he wouldn't have to spend his whole life chasing someone else's way of living: L's job, Near's grades, Evzan's aesthetic. The whole point of leaving Wammy's had been to figure out how to be an original.

Matt slipped out of the apartment when he woke up to go meet his dealer downstairs, and Mello gave him a hundred dollar bill. Matt's dealer refused to meet Mello: he always had to go through Matt. This, too, made him feel like a copycat and a poseur, in so many ways.

'She's a single mother.' Matt had bragged, once. He thought that was really altruistic of him, to buy drugs from a single mother.

Mello watched Matt shuffle his jacket on with an unlit cigarette hanging out of his mouth. This was Matt in all his glory.

'Ok, last night, no work.' Matt said when he returned.

'No – not no work.' Mello grumbled, looking up from his laptop at Matt's wincing grin.

'What are you planning to accomplish between now and 6am?' Matt asked.

'More than you, less than necessary to catch Kira.' Mello muttered pessimistically.

Matt snorted. 'Doesn't seem worth it to me.' he said. He put the bag he'd bought Mello next to him on the table and started to bustle around the kitchen, making toast. 'Is there jam?' he asked.

'Don't think so.'

'Butter?'

'No.'

'What is there?'

'You're the one with your head in the cupboards, you tell me.'

Matt's complaining died down when he was seated with two pieces of plain burnt toast and a cider. He started to zone out looking out the window, just holding his meal in two hands like a statue and watching the sky turn pink. Mello cut lines for himself and intended to stay up all night listening to tapes from a Pro-Kira network in Japan, staring at the back of Matt's messy, candy-apple red bedhead.

For dinner, he got up and made canned vegetable soup. Matt drifted into the kitchen after him and started to talk about cat fishing, which was his new money making scheme. For some reason, Matt was really good at making men fall in love with him online.

'Do you have a type?' Mello asked him when Matt shoved his phone in Mello's face, showing him an admittedly funny conversation he'd had with a balding gas station attendant about beaches – for which the man had apparently payed Matt 40$.

'Hmm...' Matt reached out and flattened his palms against Mello's bare stomach. They both liked it when Mello went without a shirt at home. 'Blondes.'

'I meant for men to target with your little scams.'

'Nah. Oh – pathetic people.'

Mello couldn't hold in a barking laugh. 'How can you tell, just lookin' at 'em?'

'I can smell it on them like a bloodhound.'

Mello shook his head in disbelief. While he was stirring his soup with one hand, Matt took the other and lifted it to his thin lips. 'Yeah, I have a type.' he mumbled against the knuckle of Mello's trigger finger, and then kissed it.

Mello's stomach shriveled. Matt was good at making men fall in love with him, period.

'You should take a break.' Matt said, pulling on the hand he was holding so he could put Mello's fingers around the back of his neck, and sidling up close. 'Man, we're going to be on a plane for days tomorrow.'

Mello kneaded Matt's skin, scratched with his long painted nails. 'I'm taking a dinner break.' he said coldly, with the knife's edge of a smile.

'So eat me.' Matt said ridiculously, and then cackled.

'That's how you talk to your johns, Matt?'

'That's right.'

Matt's mouth attached to Mello's throat, sucking, and he was silent.

'Ok,' Mello said, turning the burner off and wrapping his arms around Matt's shoulders. 'Fine. You're the horniest bastard...'

'Nuhuh.' Matt said, putting his hand on Mello's hard crotch. 'I'm tied with some other bitch.'

Mello rolled his eyes. He grabbed a handful of Matt's hair and yanked on him, dipped his head down to kiss him with his tongue out. Matt was stale, hard like chicken bones, but his sweat smelt good, somehow. He made Mello want to hump him while they stood in front of the stove, or slam him into something and bite him like an animal. 'Get over here.' he said instead, taking a handful of his flat ass and pulling him into the hallway.

'Can I fuck you?' Matt asked with his eyes closed.

'Yeah, yeah...' Mello said, 'and then you're gonna do some real work.'

Matt's face soured. He let Mello shove him onto the mattress in their messy dark bedroom, submitted to being kissed as he lay on his back with his legs open while Mello ground down on him.

'Here,' Mello said after a long wet moment, swinging one knee off Matt's hips and lying next to him with his head on the pillow. He shucked his pants. Already without underwear or shirt, that was the extent of the necessary undressing.

'You're fucking hot,' Matt panted while he felt behind Mello for his ass. 'That's my type, too.'

'That's everyone's type.' Mello said shortly. Matt was a very bad kisser when he was distracted, as he quickly became by fumbling lube onto his fingers and putting them inside Mello one by one, so Mello held the back of his head and let him breath hotly on his throat, flattered by Matt's desperation.

Mello turned around so Matt could spoon him and guide his cock in, holding one of Matt's hands. Matt liked to hear him talk, so he talked non-stop: commands, mostly. Go faster, tell me you're mine, don't come yet.

'Ok, ok,' Mello said while Matt was still shallowly thrusting, twisting his torso to swat at his freckled chest. 'Get on your back.'

Matt did as he was told. His cheeks were hot and red, ears too. Mello climbed back on top of him, missing the view from above, and sat down on him so he could ride him, instead. He liked watching Matt's face get blotchy, and he liked shoving his weight onto Matt's hipbones, wanted to bruise them with his ass if he could.

Matt's hands trailed up Mello's thighs, one of them stopping at the base of his cock and the other grabbing his waist.

'Don't tickle me.' Mello snapped, and Matt moved it again so he was touching the hardness of Mello's hard won abs, instead.

'Jesus.' Matt sighed.

'No, no – say it, say Mihael.'

'Mihael.'

Mello nodded furiously, speeding up his movements, grabbing Matt's wrist to hold him steady. He came before Matt did, looking piercingly into Matt's eyes like they were having a staring contest. He came saying, 'yes, Matt.'

'Let's not do anything else tonight.' Matt whispered when they'd finised. 'Just drugs and sex.'

Mello rolled his eyes. 'I've got soup on.' For the next five minutes, at most, he would pet Matt's soft head and let Matt press kisses along his jaw.

'Yeah, I guess have dudes to scam.' Matt sniggered into Mello's neck. 'I'm a busy man.'

'Hm.'

Mello extracted himself from Matt's arms, leaving him lying like a starfish on the sheets to get back to his work. He sat at the table with the pot and a spoon, eating while his eyes stared at the white walls, voices in his ears through the headphones raving about the New World.

Matt didn't reappear until after he'd given up yelling Mello's name, yelling "Fire!", giggling "Help!" and then he drifted back into the room wearing a goofy disappointed smile, split a line with Mello, and went to work like Mello had told him to. For all his whinging, he was diligent enough when it counted.

They stayed up typing until it was time to load the few bags they were bringing into the hired car and head out for the airport.

'Think you'll miss this place?' Matt asked Mello in the stairwell. 'Like, the city and whatever?'

Mello knew he would. He was nostalgic, a little bit of a romantic. He would probably look fondly back on the nights he spent in his underground bunker with his arms on the back of a big couch, feet on the table. He would reminisce about heat waves warping his bare arms when he walked from the apartment to the liquor store for gin. He could already conjure a wistful image of Matt tucked away on the balcony with smoke curling around his slumped shoulders, gazing out over the city lights. 'It doesn't matter.' he said.

'Maybe we'll come back.' Matt said, hearing the bitterness.

Maybe Mello would go back to England, and surprise himself with how small and unimportant Wammy's front gate looked to his 20 year old eyes. Maybe he would go to Prague, and find the streets unfamiliar, the kitchens dim. It really didn't matter. The places he'd known only existed in his memory, now.

It wasn't for another handful of hours that he and Matt felt ready to sleep on the plane, at first still too buzzed and anticipatory to nod off. Finally, Matt shuffled until his head was resting on Mello's arm and his knees were pressed hard into the back of the seat in front of them, and he dozzed. Mello tipped his own head back and slept dreamfully right through the on-flight meal.

When he awakened, Matt was sipping on a plastic cup of ginger ale and playing on his Gameboy, still squashed against Mello's side. Mello reached into the bag at his feet and pulled out his book, opening it to read.

The flight might have been boring, instead of annoying, if Matt hadn't spent the hours that followed shifting, complaining, drinking, and twitching. It was a relief to land in Japan.

They clambered into a taxi. Matt seemed more subdued now that he could alit his eyes on something new, keeping his nose pressed to the window. Outside, it was dark and neon. There were no stars.

'Bet our place is small.' Matt said.

'It's a small country.' Mello agreed. He was exhausted from their all-nighter and the discomfort of napping in the plane seat. Anything with a bed would satisfy him.

'It seems peaceful.' Matt said insanely. They were cradled by traffic, by vibrant signs and swinging restaurant doors.

'It seems busy as shit.'

'Yeah, but like...' Matt shrugged. 'I don't know. We should go out for a drink.'

'You can't be fucking serious.' Mello groaned. 'We have unpacking to do, systems to set up, we have to put sheets on the futon, you have to brush your teeth as soon as we're in the door.'

'Jeez, I get it.' Matt shook his head. 'We'll set up your futon, I'll brush my teeth, I want to some warm sake.'

'No.'

'Come on, Mello, compromise.'

Matt's fingers travelled across the middle seat like a spreading leak, and then trickled over the back of Mello's hand. He closed them around Mello's wrist and squeezed.

'One drink.' Mello said.

Matt shut up after that, a knowing little smile on his mouth. It was so hard for Mello to focus with him around.

Their new flat was smaller than the old one, but it was cozy instead of cramped. Mello had brought only one of his jackets, and Matt had left a lot of old pizza boxes behind, so there was space for them enough. Matt didn't help Mello with the futon, opting instead to smoke in the middle of the living room floor, using an empty water bottle as an ashtray. The smell of new home was already being layered over with Matt's signature musk. Maybe dragging him from place to place was the key to beating nostalgia, because Mello already felt like he'd been dipped in the same colours they'd worn back in LA, surrounded as he was by the same foul smells.

By the time they left the aparment, it was drizzling. Matt shielded his cigarette from the weather with a protective hand, and Mello shielded them both with a little umbrella, favouring his own hair. They walked in a weekend bustle, through clumps of young people and past groups of men in ties.

The closest bar was not far from their apartment block, and Mello was actually grateful for the short walk after such a long period sitting down. He cracked his neck when he sat on a stool next to Matt and purused the menu.

There was some small talk with a bartender about where they'd come from, how they'd ended up speaking such fluent Japanese, if they liked it so far, and then they were left alone to hold steaming drinks in their cupped hands and talk lazily between themselves.

'Weird that Kira's, like, right here.' Matt said. His jitters had faded and now he looked rosy and a little shocked. He usually looked shocked when he was out in public, like he'd forgotten what it would be like to be among his fellow human beings.

'We're so close.' Mello agreed. He mimed grabbing something in his fist, leather glove crinkling.

'Cheers.' Matt said. 'To you. Getting Kira's head.'

Mello clinked glasses with him. 'To winning.'


	8. CONFIRMATION, CLOSE

The artist who'd rendered Jesus in Mello's new painting of the Baptism of Christ had made him a little bit too sexy for it to have been an accident.

When Matt was 10 or something, he'd had a neighbour who had invited him over to her house to look through an old magazine. They'd sat on the edge of her yellowish duvet, facing a cracked pale wall with one framed photograph hanging by a bit of frayed twine on a raw metal nail: a black and white picture of her recently dead husband, which showed him shirtless and carrying a worn leather saddle in his well-defined arms. Gleaming muscles were bright on an ink background; grey shadowy six pack.

The Jesus painting made Matt feel like he was back in that room, trying to avoid staring at the abs of a doomed man.

'How do we fuck in here?' Matt asked when Mello banged the painting into the wall with a hammer.

'On all fours, on our backs, what are you talkin' about?' Mello muttered.

'I feel like Jesus is, like, watching me and finding me wanting.'

'Of course he is, he's Christ.'

'He's shredded.'

'He was a carpenter.'

'Hey, I'm thinking about adding another leg to the dining table,' Matt grinned. 'Now who's wanting, eh?'

Mello rolled his eyes. 'I'll believe it when I see it.'

'Not sure where I'd get the leg.' Matt conceded, bouncing a little on the mattress and lighting a cigarette. 'Never seen one at the konbini.'

'Stick to what you're good at.' Mello suggested.

'I'd love to...' Matt agreed. 'So you won't mind that I'll not be doing any dishes anymore?'

'If you don't mind that I'll not be stickin' around.'

Matt closed his eyes and Mello wandered over to peck his mouth.

Their worlds had shrunk down to just each other since they'd arrived in Japan. Mello had lifted the corner of the busy tapestry of the country's roadmap and found nothing underneath: no criminal underground, no Mob ready and waiting, no one with the balls to so much as nick a bag of crisps from a corner store on Kira's own soil.

No people, no help. No drugs, no guns, no fun.

Matt was taking on as much casework as he could, staying up late watching video feeds and eating egg roll cookies. But he couldn't replace an entire gang's worth of people, no matter how many all-nighters he pulled.

By now, Matt was used to letting Mello down. He played a lot of online games that couldn't be paused, so more than once he'd denied running down to the shops to get Mello a bottle of Robotussin when he had a cold, or he'd gotten too comfortable in the sinking cushions of their old green couch and refused to get up to grab a chocolate bar from the fridge for Mello when Mello asked. That sort of thing was always happening. Matt was really bad at being helpful in the everyday, small ways that people noticed. He was aware of his mundane laziness, his inability to follow through with chores and errands. It _ was _ starting to annoy Mello, but only because Matt's minorly irritating idiosyncrasies were grating against hi s exhaustion, his frustration at his limited progress in the case and hi s lack of resources ; they were both getting very erratic, sparse sleep. Mello had even developed an exhausted eye twitch. For all the mistakes Matt was making as a detective, Mello could have been _ furious _, but was only resigned.

Despite all their setbacks, Mello had managed to make some important headway in the case. He'd uncovered information even Near didn't have. Actually, that was their major problem, these days. Halle was still acting as an informant on the movements of the SPK, and when Mello found out that Near was planning a confrontation with Kira – the Second L – very, very soon, they were suddenly on a frenzied timeline to reveal the existence of a fake notebook, to win the game before Near and his posse were butchered in an airplane hanger somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Mello was jittery, and hyper-caffeinated on chocolate and coffee, stilling his hands with the occasional cigarette. Matt thought it was nice of him to care so much, sort of appealing to watch him twitch around a vodka soda like a sexy sweating savage.

Matt shifted on the bed so he was lying horizontally, legs hanging over the end, feet flat. Most mornings, Mello would wake up twenty minutes before his alarm to the sound of Matt's raucous music coming from the living room. There, curled on the floor, Matt would be sleeping with his head on one arm, laptop propped open or headset still nestled in his hair like berries in a bramble, squished under one ear and leaving red marks on his soft cheeks. Matt's loyalty was irreplaceable.

'Give me one of those.' Mello said into the stale air, pointing a gloved finger at Matt's pack of smokes.

Matt flung the pack at Mello's chest and said, 'What's up?'

'We're really down to the wire.' Mello answered, after a beat of silence. 'With this case.'

'Well, yeah.'

'So we need a plan.'

'Yup.'

'I've been looking at it from every angle.'

'Uhuh.'

Dust motes in the noon sun kept falling on Matt's upturned nose. A sunbeam was cutting him in two, like a magician's trick. Mello had never stopped being enraptured by him because Matt had never stopped growing into Mello's expectations like a choking vine. When Mello started thinking a life of crime was the coolest way for a boy to make his money, Matt was a criminal. When Mello jerked off in an ashy room, Matt was a smoker. Mello still didn't believe in God, or fate, or anything except his own power and his uncanny ability to overcome, but sometimes moments with Matt were religious, anyway. Sometimes Mello liked a bit of imagery, a touch of drama.

'I'm thinkin' I'll take Takada from outside the News Station building.' Mello said, and launched into a brief explanation of the new kidnapping plot he'd been dreaming up since finding out about Near's next move. 'Then I guess I'm gonna need you to be the car guy.'

'Well, not _ just _ the car guy.' Matt said, sitting up and shaking his moppy hair out of his face.

Mello squinted at him, unsure what he was getting at. 'What do you mean?'

'I'm a little more than just the car guy.' Matt shrugged.

'Do you want to be the guy who brings me a coffee in the morning, too, then?' Mello asked coolly, disliking being challenged.

'At the very least.' Matt said lightly.

Something in Matt's tone grated against Mello's inferiority complex, against the weight of all the independence he'd shouldered since leaving the Orphanage, had fought for in the Mafia. 'I don't know why you're causing an argument right now, Matt. What the fuck is this about? I don't have room for changes in this plan just because you want to, what, drive the motorcycle yourself? So you can feel special?'

'No, no, I just don't like the insinuation that I'm, like, only useful because you've got no one else. You know,_ I guess _Matt will drive a car to distract some guys, I mean _he might as well_. Man, I've basically funded this whole vacation.' Matt said, chuckling_._

'If I knew you were gonna fuckin' throw it in my face, Matt, I wouldn't have taken your fuckin' scam money.' Mello growled.

'I don't know why you're being so defensive, I'm just saying.'

'I don't know why you're starting this!' Mello retorted. 'We were having a good fucking -' he paused, cheeks colouring, ' a good fuckin' day.'

'We can still have a good day, jeez.' Matt rubbed awkwardly at the back of his neck. 'I guess I've just... I don't know, been feeling... sort of... useless.'

'Why?'

'I fucked up that thing with Misa. I don't know. You haven't said anything about it, but I fuck a lot of this shit up. So you gave me a small role. I don't know. I did a lot, you know? I'm capable. I don't know if I'm showing that off, right now, but like... I don't want to just have a throwaway job.'

'Jesus Christ – Matt, there are only two jobs. Stop reading into this.'

'Ok, sure.'

'What do you want from me?'

'I guess nothing. No, seriously. I don't know why I – you're right, I was being... like, reading into it too much. Just wouldn't kill you to blow me sometime.'

'Uhuh.'

'Just show some appreciation, since you obviously can't ever, like, use your words.'

'I appreciate you.'

'Yeah.'

Matt shifted his gaze back to the Jesus painting. 'What's going in in that picture, anyway?' he asked, obviously changing the subject. 'I thought it was babies who get baptized.'

'You can be baptized at any age.' Mello sighed. 'And there's more than one way.'

'Did you get baptized?'

'Of course.' Mello said.

'What if you do a bunch of nasty shit, do you have to get baptized again?'

'No.'

'What if you just really_ feel_ like it.'

'I don't know, Matt.'

'What if I got baptized, being an atheist?'

'Then you'd have gotten baptized.'

'That's so fascinating, thank you for walking down this hypothetical path with me, Mello.'

Mello rolled his eyes.

'Why don't you sit down?' Matt asked, patting the bed beside him. 'You look a little bit like you need to sit down.'

With a shrug, Mello sat. He pulled out his phone and started flicking through text messages, letting Matt grab him around the middle and squeeze him and bury his nose in his shaggy hair. 'I'm sending you some stuff.' Mello said.

'Look up at that Jesus thing from this angle and tell me you don't mind waving your dick out right in front of it.' Matt muttered into Mello's jawline, lips like moth's wings against his skin.

'I don't mind.' Mello said, giving it a cursory glance. 'I bought it because it reminded me of something, something I tell myself to motivate myself. I want it there.'

'Reminds me of something, too.' Matt said.

'What?'

'Just this weird lady from when I was a kid.'

The fluttering confusion on Mello's face made Matt sputter a laugh.

'It reminds me to become new, as much as necessary, to always make myself new.' Mello explained.

'So that's how you do it.' Matt teased.

'Tell me about this weird lady.' Mello prompted, nose still in his phone.

'Well, this lady I knew had this porn picture of her dead husband hanging in her bedroom, and it was the only decoration in the whole house, so it was extra weird. Who goes and gets a professional photo of themselves shirtless and then, like, hangs it in their bedroom?' As Matt said it, smiling crookedly, he thought of an amendment, 'Other than maybe you.'

'I wouldn't.'

'Well, let's see what happens when you're 40 and you've had a couple more years to develop your self-interest.'

With such carefree ease, Matt admitted to imagining a future together. Mello had been fretting, in these desperate few days as their grand finale drew closer, about what might happen _ after. _To which country would they retreat? What sort of roof would they live under? What sort of relationship would they develop? Would Mello have time to cook them a holiday meal, and would Matt wink at him over a kitchen island and steal a bit of frosting off the top of a pastry? Would they know how to do it, would they learn to do it? Would Mello roar down a city road in his motorcycle with Matt lightly holding his belly? They could drink schnapps at a table in the warm glow of Christmas tree lights. They could read the newspaper. They could solve cryptic crosswords. And, underneath it all, excitingly, they could stash Mello's guns and Matt's bags of powders in dresser drawers and tins in the kitchen. They could make big money and do anything, anything, anything. Without Kira to stop them, they could really live.

'You never tell me shit about yourself.' Mello said. 'Tell me something else.'

'Oh, hmm.' Matt flicked the lighter for Mello, passing him another smoke, and then lit up himself. He loved smoking with Mello. He loved everything they did together. 'I lived in this sort of wooden... house, with a backyard. We had a laundry wire. There was a fence. We had a car.'

Mello snorted. 'You haven't told me anything about yourself because you're a shit narrator.'

'Aw, come on.' Matt huffed. 'You want a story?'

'I'd rather have a story than a list.'

'Well, then I won't tell you about how we had a fridge and there was a front door and a back.'

'Spare me.'

Matt's lopsided dimple crinkled. 'How about this: once I walked to school in only socks in September, because I'd thrown my shoes at a basketball someone had lodged up in a tree and they'd ended up stuck, too.'

'No good.' Mello judged.

'Why?'

'I don't feel any attachment to the characters.'

'But it's me!' Matt laughed, pushing at Mello's arm. 'Ok, one time, I went with these guys into the city, and we found a whole outfit laid out near a creek, like someone had laid down and disintegrated right there. Purse, skirt, everything. It totally stuck with me because I was like... man, a person is naked somewhere, or dead. I wonder which?'

Mello nodded. 'I found a backpack and a pair of hiking boots at a trailhead once. Backpack was full of orange traffic cones.'

'Man, there are so many weird people out there.' Matt said. 'That's what's so fucked about Kira, I think – why get rid of the all the interesting, weird people? Man, there was this guy who lived down the street from us who bred these dogs called, uh, well... I don't know what they were called, but they were these cool white dogs. And he also did a bunch of armed robberies. I heard about it. But like, he was cool. He had all these dogs.'

'I thought you didn't like dogs.' Mello said.

'No, I don't. But I still think an otherwise nice guy who did some robberies should be able to just breed dogs out in Kuybyshev without anyone bothering him about it.'

Mello snorted, and leant over Matt's thighs to put his tongue in his mouth, as a reward for thinking that. 'Tell me more,' he said breathlessly against Matt's mouth, 'tell me more about the type of people you'd save.'

The next days bled together, approaching January 26 th . Their routine was so repetitive, no weekend stood out from a weekday. Mello dragged his feet through the mornings, at once desperate for more time to prepare and anxious to get to the starting line, already. The day before the kidnapping, he had already triple checked the routes they'd take, the time Takada would arrive , that Matt's gun was in proper working order, that his bike's tank was full. All that was left was to pace, and listen to Matt telling him _sit down, c'mon, sit a while. _

'And you checked, you have power steering fluid. Whatever the fuck... steering fluid...' Mello muttered, dodging Matt's grabbing hands as he breezed past the couch where Matt was sitting, twisting wires for what he called a "personal project".

'Duh.' Matt said. 'Worrying about the hydraulics in my car is getting pretty nitty gritty, baby.'

'Nothing can go wrong.'

'Nothing will go wrong. Or, it will, and you'll set a big fire. It'll be fine.'

'Did you check?'

Matt grumbled and rolled his eyes. 'No one _checks_ that.'

'Let's go unprepared into our drive-by shooting.' Mello said, deadpan.

'Let's make trenches in the carpet over it.' Matt clipped back.

Sighing, Mello pulled out a seat at the little table they'd set up in the kitchen, only an arms reach away from where Matt was lounging, thanks to the tiny open floor plan of their temporary apartment. 'Are you packed for Kiev?' They would escape there, sit and wait for Kira to blow over.

'We have some time between the thing and the plane.' Matt said, so nonchalant it was irritating. 'But I packed my gear and some shirts, so if we don't have time to kill, I won't bitch – Jesus, your face. Chill.'

There was no point hurrying Matt. Mello didn't have power over him, the way he'd amassed power over gangs and Presidents. 'Fine.'

'You'd almost think you weren't looking forward to this.' Matt cracked a smile. He was bathed in yellow sunlight, jaundiced from fingertip to the flaming freckled bridge of his nose. 'You're about to win.'

\- And that was what Mello told himself when he swung his leg over his motorcycle the next morning, Matt's stained smiling teeth in his mind's eye.

The day was fresh. Mello could feel the cold creaking in his leather gloves, nudging his exposed cheeks. He put his helmet on with finality. Through the tint in the visor, he watched Matt peel away in his cool little red chevy. A loitering anger was pooling in his gut, at nothing and no-one in particular. It was the feeling that, in him, replaced anticipation, nervousness, fear. It was part of his power, his strength of will, to swap one emotion for another, to push it all down. He breathed deep and kicked off, steering into traffic.

Driving was a beautiful calm. Mello had always loved to ride, always savoured the rush of it. Being on the bike alone was like freedom, being on the bike with Matt behind him felt as close to true love as Mello imagined a man could get.

Takada huddled onto the back of the bike with a little shuffle of her coat, coated in the confusion of Matt's gunsmoke. Through the haze, Mello could make out Matt's tires burning away over the asphalt. He zipped off the curb and dodged down an alleyway, catlike, to drop the tail of bodyguards who tried to trail him into the city. Chipping off chunks of the plan settled his stomach; a little at a time, he unwound.

One of the details he'd agonised about for days was the placing of the delivery truck. The outfit that would shield him from recognition was stashed in the passenger seat, and the keys were on Mello's belt. He changed quickly in the cab, transferred Takada into the back. Another step closer to victory, so close he could taste the cloying tang of success on the meat of his tongue like a heavy metal.

Laser focused, he drove the truck out of the city. The little television on his dashboard was tuned in to Takada's channel: it would show him the aftermath of the kidnapping, the first reports on what he hoped would be a major factor in Kira's ever-nearing downfall.

There they were: the smoky front doors Takada had never walked through. There was a news anchor saying it was shocking. There was Matt's car, _ Matt's car wrecked, _ Matt's car in a puddle of shimmering glass, unknown man dead, like it was _ good news - _

\- and that was so fitting an end for Matt, to sort of smile and bleed out.

This was Mello's operative heart-string high note. This was his moment, the glorious completion of his master plan. This was the devastating loss of the love of his life, of his motivation for all he'd done, of his reason to fight for a brighter future. Here was his chance... but his boots sunk and caught in a quicksand of guilt.

Guilt.

_ Forgive me. _

There was no one left who would.

He parked in the safe embrace of a stone church ruin, numb like a fever. The rubble of the cathedral he'd been building, the life he'd been making, the great gesture, crumbled around him like drying ink on a page.

Quietly, Mello died.


End file.
